Chapter 1 - CRISPRized fruit, vegetable, and ornamental crops: A note from editors

Abstract

Horticultural crops, including fruit, vegetable, and ornamental plants, are an important component of the agriculture production systems and play an important role in sustaining human life. Genome editing technology has the potential to revolutionize the field of horticulture by providing new tools for the genetic amelioration of fruits and vegetables. Clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats (CRISPR) genome editing is a powerful tool that has the potential to revolutionize the way we produce fruits and vegetables. With CRISPR, scientists can make precise, targeted modifications to the DNA of plants, enabling them to create crops with improved yield, disease resistance, nutritional content, and other desirable traits. This book summarizes applications of CRISPR-Cas systems and its advanced variants, vector transformation methods, epigenome, deep learning, synthetic biology, and precision breeding for improving yield and quality-related attributes in horticultural crops, such as fruit, vegetables, and ornamental plants, are crucial to the production of agriculture and are essential to keeping people alive. By offering new methods for genetic improvement of fruits and vegetables, genome editing technology has the potential to transform the world of horticulture. CRISPR-CRISPR-associated protein 9 (Cas9) has become an important tool for genome editing that can modify DNA sequences at specific locations in the loci that are being targeted. Beyond genome editing applications, CRISPR technology has been further broadened by CRISPR-based techniques like base editing, prime editing, and RNA editing. However, some world organizations and governments around the globe have divergent views/regulations for CRISPRized horticulture crops, and how these crops will be regulated will determine the future of this technology. This book summarizes applications of CRISPR-Cas systems and their advanced variants, vector transformation methods, epigenome, deep learning, synthetic biology, and precision breeding for improving yield and quality-related attributes in horticultural crops.