Genome Editing and Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crop Plants

Abstract

Abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, high temperature, chilling, and heavy metals have caused alterations in plant growth and development, threatening crop yield and quality, and leading to global food insecurity. In this aspect, plant breeders have developed many genetic engineering approaches to enhance crop productivity, which are not able to meet the demand of food production as the inheritance of abiotic stress tolerance is so complex. To overcome the limitations of genetic engineering techniques, plant breeders are now focusing on recent availability of genome editing because of its simplicity, high efficiency, and precise target modification at genomic loci for developing abiotic stress-tolerant crops. Advancements in genome editing technologies such as zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR/Cas9) have made it possible for molecular biologists to more precisely target any gene of interest. However, ZFNs and TALENs are costly and protracted as they involve intricate steps that require protein engineering. Among these techniques, CRISPR/Cas9 is widely used for reasons of its simplicity, low cost, and ease of genome editing. This chapter focuses on the application of recent genome editing tools in advancing abiotic stress tolerance in different crop plants.