Abstract
Hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) is a multipurpose crop with many important uses including medicine, fibre, food and biocomposites. This plant is currently gaining prominence and acceptance for its valuable applications. Hemp is grown as a cash crop for its novel cannabinoids which are estimated to be a multibillion-dollar downstream market. Hemp cultivation can play a major role in carbon sequestration with good CO2 to biomass conversion in low input systems and can also improve soil health and promote phytoremediation. The recent advent of genome editing tools to produce non-transgenic genome-edited crops with no trace of foreign genetic material has the potential to overcome regulatory hurdles faced by genetically modified crops. The use of Artificial Intelligence - mediated trait discovery platforms are revolutionizing the agricultural industry to produce desirable crops with unprecedented accuracy and speed. However, genome editing tools to improve the beneficial properties of hemp have not yet been deployed. Recent availability of high-quality Cannabis genome sequences from several strains (cannabidiol and tetrahydrocannabinol balanced and CBD/THC rich strains) have paved the way for improving the production of valuable bioactive molecules for the welfare of humankind and the environment. In this context, the article focuses on exploiting advanced genome editing tools to produce non-transgenic hemp to improve the most industrially desirable traits. The challenges, opportunities and interdisciplinary approaches that can be adopted from existing technologies in other plant species are highlighted.
Highlights
Cultivation of hemp (Cannabis sativa) has increased globally in recent years and is a profitable enterprise that generates a range of useful products such as bioactive cannabinoids, seed, seed oil, fibre, textiles, construction materials and biocomposites
Cannabinoids accumulate in the secretory cavity of the hair-like glandular trichomes which are found in greatest abundance on the female inflorescences (Livingston et al, 2020)
A specific donor DNA is included together with Cas9 and sgRNA which spans the flanking regions of the target site with the donor DNA element in between. The presence of this single-stranded DNA triggers the Homology Directed Repair (HDR) mechanism wherein the donor DNA is used as a template by the DNA repair machinery to repair the cut target site, and the target DNA sequence gets introduced to the target genome (Chen et al, 2019)
Summary
Cultivation of hemp (Cannabis sativa) has increased globally in recent years and is a profitable enterprise that generates a range of useful products such as bioactive cannabinoids, seed, seed oil, fibre, textiles, construction materials and biocomposites. The presence of this single-stranded DNA triggers the Homology Directed Repair (HDR) mechanism wherein the donor DNA is used as a template by the DNA repair machinery to repair the cut target site, and the target DNA sequence gets introduced to the target genome (Chen et al, 2019) This new generation of precision methods has several applications in hemp breeding such as gene knockout/knock-in, base editing, gene- and genome-wide screening, modifying gene regulation, and developing virus resistant plants, as demonstrated in different recalcitrant species such as wheat, maize and grape. These strategies have been clearly detailed in the review article by Chen et al (2019) by providing specific examples. For regenerating plants from genome edited grapevine protoplasts the authors embedded the protoplasts in alginate disks and stimulated the formation of mini-calli in NN-based cultivation medium (Nitsch and Nitsch, 1969) optimized for regeneration
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