A New Approach to Develop Resistant Cultivars Against the Plant Pathogens: CRISPR Drives

Abstract

CRISPR drive is a recent and robust tool that allows durable genetic manipulation of the pest population like human disease vectors such as malaria vector mosquitos. In recent years, it has been suggested that CRISPR drives can also be used to control plant diseases, pests, and weeds. However, using a CRISPR drive in Arabidopsis for the first time in 2021 has been shown to use this technology in plant breeding to obtain homozygous parental lines. This perspective has proposed using CRISPR drive to develop pathogen-resistant cultivars by disrupting the susceptibility gene (S). In the breeding program, CRISPR is used to create S-gene mutations in two parental lines of hybrid cultivars. However, CRISPR must be reapplied or long-term backcrossed for the parental line to obtain homozygous S-mutant cultivars. When a parental line crosses with different parental lines to develop new hybrids, heterozygous S-mutations could not resist in hybrid against the pathogen. CRISPR drives are theoretically valid to develop homozygous S-mutant plants against pathogens by only routine pollination after CRISPR drive transformation to just one parental line. This way, breeders could use this parental line in different crossing combinations without reapplying the genome-editing technique or backcrossing. Moreover, CRISPR drive also could allow the development of marker-free resistant cultivars with modifications on the drive cassette.

CRISPR-Based Genome Editing Tools: An Accelerator in Crop Breeding for a Changing Future

“…With improvements in the efficiency of the HDR mechanism in plants, the application of the CRISPR gene drive in plant breeding is promising and will gain momentum in future speed-breeding projects. For example, to accelerate the breeding of pathogen-resistant crop varieties possessing the mutated susceptibility (S) gene (S-mutants), the CRISPR gene drive system can be used to develop a homozygous S-mutant in a single parental line and re-use this parental line in numerous crossing experiments to produce high-quality cultivars without the need to perform CRISPR edits on each parent for every hybrid combination, thus saving time and resources [196]. Other potential applications of the CRISPR gene drive in plants include weed control [197], improvement of yield traits [198] and homoeologous allele editing in polyploid crop species with several factors to be considered for effective gene drives, such as the plant life history, the DNA repair mechanism, the potential for unintended evolutionary responses and ecological risk [194].…”

Benefits and risks of gene drives for invasive plant management - the case for common tansy

“…Gene drives could also prove useful for plant breeding, plant pathogen control, and conservation. Plant breeders could use gene drives to shorten the inbreeding time to produce homozygous parental lines and improve gene-editing in polyploid crops (Siddiqui et al, 2021;Tek and Budak, 2022). The use of gene drives to control pathogens and pests of agricultural crops has also been discussed (Courtier-Orgogozo et al, 2017;Medina, 2018;Gardiner et al, 2020).…”