Targeting Metabolic Pathways for Abiotic Stress Tolerance Through Genetic Engineering in Rice

Abstract

Rice is one of the leading staple foods and widely consumed worldwide. The production of rice is mostly affected by major abiotic stresses like drought, salinity, cold and high temperature by disturbing the metabolic processes involved in its growth and development. Engineering those sensitive metabolic pathways by targeting the metabolites involved could make the plant tolerant to these abiotic stresses. Therefore, targeting metabolic pathways through genetic engineering in rice is one of the major strategies for crop improvement. Metabolic engineering is a powerful tool for optimizing a targeted metabolite regulatory process to increase the cellular production of the specific metabolite. Engineered metabolic pathways can be achieved by modification in a single stress-responsive gene or multiple associated genes. Therefore, primary step to metabolite engineering is the identification of target genes involved in abiotic stress-responsive metabolic pathways. Metabolic pathways such as osmolyte pathways, reactive oxygen species pathways, hormonal pathways and other signal transduction pathways are the potential targets of genetic engineering for abiotic stress tolerance in rice. On the other hand, emerging techniques such as CRISPR Cas9/Cpf1 targeting negative regulatory metabolic pathway genes add more possibility to develop sustainable abiotic stress tolerance in rice. Overall, this chapter summarizes the earlier major findings to the most recent discoveries in the field of metabolic engineering by targeting important pathways involved in abiotic stress tolerance in rice. The novel genetic engineering tools and proposed potential targets of metabolic engineering for abiotic stress tolerance would have huge impact on sustainable productivity and rice crop improvement.