Application of CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated gene editing for abiotic stress management in crop plants

Authors: KUMAR, MANOJ - Volcani Center (ARO); PRUSTY, MANAS - Volcani Center (ARO); PANDEY, MANISH - International Crops Research Institute For Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) - India; SINGH, PRASHANT - International Crops Research Institute For Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) - India; BOHRA, ABHISHEK - Murdoch University; Guo, Baozhu; VARSHNEY, RAJEEV - Murdoch University

Submitted to: Frontiers in Plant Science
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 3/27/2023
Publication Date: 4/18/2023
Citation: Kumar, M., Prusty, M.R., Pandey, M.K., Singh, P.K., Bohra, A., Guo, B., Varshney, R.K. 2023. Application of CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated gene editing for abiotic stress management in crop plants. Frontiers in Plant Science. 14:1157678. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1157678.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1157678

Interpretive Summary: Abiotic stresses, including drought, salinity, cold, heat, and heavy metals, extensively reduce global agricultural production. Approaches such as conventional breeding and transgenic breeding have been widely used to cope with these environmental stresses. The clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat-Cas (CRISPR/Cas) based gene-editing tool has revolutionized due to its simplicity, accessibility, adaptability, flexibility, and wide applicability. This system has great potential to build up crop varieties with enhanced tolerance against abiotic stresses. In this review, we summarize the most recent findings on understanding the mechanism of abiotic stress response in plants and the application of CRISPR/Cas mediated gene-editing system towards enhanced tolerance to drought, salinity, cold, heat, and heavy metals stresses. Furthermore, in this review, we highlighted the recent advancements in prime editing and base editing tools for crop improvement.

Technical Abstract: Abiotic stresses, including drought, salinity, cold, heat, and heavy metals, extensively reducing global agricultural production. Traditional breeding approaches and transgenic technology have been widely used to mitigate the risks of these environmental stresses. The discovery of engineered nucleases as genetic scissors to carry out precise manipulation in crop stress-responsive genes and associated molecular network has paved the way for sustainable management of abiotic stress conditions. In this context, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat-Cas (CRISPR/Cas)-based gene-editing tool has revolutionized due to its simplicity, accessibility, adaptability, flexibility, and wide applicability. This system has great potential to build up crop varieties with enhanced tolerance against abiotic stresses. In this review, we summarize the latest findings on understanding the mechanism of abiotic stress response in plants and the application of CRISPR/Cas-mediated gene-editing system towards enhanced tolerance to a multitude of stresses including drought, salinity, cold, heat, and heavy metals. We provide mechanistic insights on the CRISPR/Cas9-based genome editing technology. We also discuss applications of evolving genome editing techniques such as prime editing and base editing, mutant library production, transgene free and multiplexing to rapidly deliver modern crop cultivars adapted to abiotic stress conditions.