CRISPR/Cas mediated genome-editing for rice improvement

Abstract

Rice is one of the important food crops, feeding more than 50% of the global population. The climate change is adversely affecting the rice production across the rice growing regions. The major challenges posing threat to the world rice production are various biotic and abiotic stresses. Rice is grown and consumed largely by the developing countries, and most part of the population in these regions are undernourished with unbalanced and comparatively low nutritional food. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to develop rice varieties for higher nutritional value with attributes for better adaptability to various stresses. In the present review, we have discussed about the different CRISPR/Cas genome editing tools, and their applications for biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, yield and also for grain and nutritional quality improvement in rice.