Introduction to Genome Editing Techniques: Implications in Modern Agriculture

Abstract

Climate change accompanied by global warming is happening at an ever alarming pace and is here to stay. Therefore, food production challenges to feed our ever-burgeoning population, which is expected to rise to 9.7 billion by 2050, will remain a steep challenge. Conventional breeding which has created a wave for the first green revolution may not come to our rescue this time entirely alone, in meeting the herculean goal. Therefore, for the second green revolution, agricultural biotechnology-based tools including precision breeding have to play a critical role. For genome editing (GE) induced precision breeding to succeed strong political, social and cultural support is needed. Changing public perception by providing complete information about genome editing will boost consumer confidence and encourage the consumption of GE food crops. Among many GE technologies available, CRISPR/Cas (Clustered Regularly Interspersed Short Palindromic Repeats and Cas for CRISPR associated proteins), is becoming a tool of choice, due to its simplicity, versatility, scalability and lower cost when compared to other biotechnological tools. Improved versions of CRISPR/Cas-GE, such as base editing are coming to the centre stage and many more technological breakthroughs are expected in the near future. Random mutagenesis based genome editing through physical irradiation and chemically induced, has been accepted all over the globe and it is, therefore, expected that CRISPR/Cas genome editing will be perceived positively. This combined with the availability of next-generation sequencing data can help us to create designer crops for the future and defray the ill effects of climate change on global food production to a large extent.