Abstract
Horticultural crops include a diverse array of crops comprising fruits, vegetables, nuts, flowers, aromatic and medicinal plants. They provide nutritional, medicinal, and aesthetic benefits to mankind. However, these crops undergo many biotic (e.g., diseases, pests) and abiotic stresses (e.g., drought, salinity). Conventional breeding strategies to improve traits in crops involve the use of a series of backcrossing and selection for introgression of a beneficial trait into elite germplasm, which is time and resource consuming. Recent new plant breeding tools such as clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) /CRISPR-associated protein-9 (Cas9) technique have the potential to be rapid, cost-effective, and precise tools for crop improvement. In this review article, we explore the CRISPR/Cas9 technology, its history, classification, general applications, specific uses in horticultural crops, challenges, existing resources, associated regulatory aspects, and the way forward.
Highlights
The current population of the world is 7.7 billion and is projected to increase to 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.9 billion by 2100 [1]
Increased challenges to agricultural production have emerged in recent years, such as the evolution of new races of pests and diseases, increased incidences of drought, heatwaves, changing climates, and other abiotic stresses [3]
Transgenic crops have potential as a solution to the limitations of traditional breeding the problems associated with them are numerous
Summary
The current population of the world is 7.7 billion and is projected to increase to 8.5 billion by 2030, 9.7 billion in 2050, and 10.9 billion by 2100 [1]. Transgenic crops have potential as a solution to the limitations of traditional breeding the problems associated with them are numerous. These crops are subject to strict regulations regarding their use, import, and export. CRISPR/Cas is one of the most recent and widely adopted gene-editing techniques [7]. While it was first reported in the 1980s, the full potential of this method began to be harnessed just a decade ago. CRISPR/Cas has been extensively used to improve crop disease resistance, which involves knocking-out susceptibility genes and overexpression of resistance genes. Like every innovation, the technology has been controversial at times and generated public outcry due to the gene-editing of a human embryo by a research group [19]
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