CRISPR/Cas9 for development of disease resistance in plants: recent progress, limitations and future prospects

Abstract

Several plant pathogens severely affect crop yield and quality, thereby threatening global food security. In order to cope with this challenge, genetic improvement of plant disease resistance is required for sustainable agricultural production, for which conventional breeding is unlikely to do enough. Luckily, genome editing systems that particularly clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) has revolutionized crop improvement by enabling robust and precise targeted genome modifications. It paves the way towards new methods for genetic improvement of plant disease resistance and accelerates resistance breeding. In this review, the challenges, limitations and prospects for conventional breeding and the applications of CRISPR/Cas9 system for the development of transgene-free disease-resistant crops are discussed.

Role of Genetics, Genomics, and Breeding Approaches to Combat Stripe Rust of Wheat

“…Various types of SSNs, i.e., Zinc finger nucleases ( ZFNs ) and Transcription activator-like effector nucleases ( TALENs ), and the CRISPR - Cas system are being used for plant genome editing ( 67 ). Targeted genome editing has become the preferred genetic tool for resistance incorporation in plants against various pathogenic diseases ( 68 ). Susceptible genes of crop plant are edited and rewritten in such a way to transform them to resistant genes ( 69 ).…”

“…The future of plant breeding efforts for durable resistance against Pst should not be limited to conventional breeding approaches; instead, novel knowledge-generating tools, i.e., bioinformatics ( 81 ), phenomics ( 82 ), advanced genomics technologies ( 83 ), and novel genome modification techniques, i.e., CRISPR and RNAi ( 68 ), should be combined to evolve durable resistance wheat varieties. Similarly, to shorten the breeding time span, double haploid breeding, shuttle breeding, and speed breeding may be incorporated ( 74 , 75 ).…”

Base Editing: The Ever Expanding Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) Tool Kit for Precise Genome Editing in Plants

“…Both ABEs and CBEs can play essential roles in the improvement of plant architecture, resistance, and nutrient uptake efficiency [38,53,69,81]. Working with genes conferring resistance is effective for the development of genome editing-tools in the lab [93]. However, producing herbicide-resistant crops for commercial application need future concern for the development of a sustainable agriculture and for public acceptance of genetic engineering.…”

Harnessing the Potential of Plant Transcription Factors in Developing Climate-Smart Crops: Future Prospects, Challenges, and Opportunities

“…As a result, a double stranded break occurs at the target site, the repair of which causes mutations in the form of insertions or deletions or in some cases frameshifts. These mutants can clarify the role of the TF under consideration [150]. Marker assisted breeding (MAB) has a wide variety of applications in stacking of multiple genes in crop plants for various purposes and had been widely used in studying wheat rust [154].…”