Abstract
Indigenous communities across the globe, especially in rural areas, consume locally available plants known as Traditional Food Plants (TFPs) for their nutritional and health-related needs. Recent research shows that many TFPs are highly nutritious as they contain health beneficial metabolites, vitamins, mineral elements and other nutrients. Excessive reliance on the mainstream staple crops has its own disadvantages. Traditional food plants are nowadays considered important crops of the future and can act as supplementary foods for the burgeoning global population. They can also act as emergency foods in situations such as COVID-19 and in times of other pandemics. The current situation necessitates locally available alternative nutritious TFPs for sustainable food production. To increase the cultivation or improve the traits in TFPs, it is essential to understand the molecular basis of the genes that regulate some important traits such as nutritional components and resilience to biotic and abiotic stresses. The integrated use of modern omics and gene editing technologies provide great opportunities to better understand the genetic and molecular basis of superior nutrient content, climate-resilient traits and adaptation to local agroclimatic zones. Recently, realizing the importance and benefits of TFPs, scientists have shown interest in the prospection and sequencing of TFPs for their improvements, cultivation and mainstreaming. Integrated omics such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and ionomics are successfully used in plants and have provided a comprehensive understanding of gene-protein-metabolite networks. Combined use of omics and editing tools has led to successful editing of beneficial traits in several TFPs. This suggests that there is ample scope for improvement of TFPs for sustainable food production. In this article, we highlight the importance, scope and progress towards improvement of TFPs for valuable traits by integrated use of omics and gene editing techniques.
Highlights
As per Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates, the global population is expected to reach nine billion by 2050 and the world will have to produce 50% more food than we produce today to feed the burgeoning population [1]
Several studies have shown that some Traditional Food Plants (TFPs) such as quinoa, millet, cassava and amaranth show tolerance to multiple abiotic stresses
The availability of genome sequence information of relatives can be directly translated to many TFPs using several tools including CRISPR/Cas-mediated gene editing
Summary
As per Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates, the global population is expected to reach nine billion by 2050 and the world will have to produce 50% more food than we produce today to feed the burgeoning population [1]. Increasing the food production of the currently available crops on available land is a challenging task [2] This challenge is further limited by several factors such as excessive reliance on a limited number of industrialized crops, decreasing land for agriculture and global climate change [2]. The current widespread cultivation of uniform domesticated varieties carries huge risks of crop failures and significant reduction in yield as they are more vulnerable to biotic (pathogen and pests) and abiotic stresses (due to global climate change) [11]. The diversification of nutritionally rich and stress-resilient traditional, orphan and underutilized crops can help to achieve the goal of a zero-hunger world as envisaged in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which propose to end hunger, achieve food security, improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture globally by 2030 [50,51]. For attaining sustainability of food production, collective efforts are required to advance the research and development on TFPs [54]
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