Genome Editing for Improvement of Wheat and Millets

Abstract

Cereal crop performance, especially wheat and millets, has been greatly improved with the rise in technologies, i.e. genome editing. The genome editing technology includes the three main strategies: CRISPR/Cas9 (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat/CRISPR-associated protein 9), zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcriptional activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs). These techniques are widely accepted and used in crop plants because of efficiency, precision and user-friendliness. Wheat is the staple food for millions of people. But various abiotic and biotic stresses continuously affect and minimize the wheat yields globally. After the wheat genome sequencing, the workers were busy in decoding and reading genomes, and since then, there has been considerable advancement in the improvement of this crop. Also, the population is escalating at a rapid grade, and so the demand for wheat consumption is rising day by day. To fulfil the growing demand and survive adverse environmental conditions, the use of recent technologies will be feasible. The wheat is a difficult crop to work with because of its complex nature, polyploid genome and problems in genetic transformation. However, with the advancement in wheat transformation, a new era will begin to mark a sustainable wheat production. In this chapter, we summarize the recent progress in wheat genetic transformation and measures to be taken to further increase transformation efficiency and genome editing potential for wheat improvement. The availability of high-quality reference genome will boost the efficient genetic engineering and functionality in wheat.