Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2018
College/Unit
Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design
Department/Program/Center
Agricultural & Extension Education
Abstract
The world population is expected to increase from 7.3 to 9.7 billion by 2050. Pest outbreak and increased abiotic stresses due to climate change pose a high risk to tropical crop production. Although conventional breeding techniques have significantly increased crop production and yield, new approaches are required to further improve crop production in order to meet the global growing demand for food. The Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 (CRISPR-associated protein9) genome editing technology has shown great promise for quickly addressing emerging challenges in agriculture. It can be used to precisely modify genome sequence of any organism including plants to achieve the desired trait. Compared to other genome editing tools such as zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcriptional activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs), CRISPR/Cas9 is faster, cheaper, precise and highly efficient in editing genomes even at the multiplex level. Application of CRISPR/Cas9 technology in editing the plant genome is emerging rapidly. The CRISPR/Cas9 is becoming a user-friendly tool for development of non-transgenic genome edited crop plants to counteract harmful effects from climate change and ensure future food security of increasing population in tropical countries. This review updates current knowledge and potentials of CRISPR/Cas9 for improvement of crops cultivated in tropical climates to gain resiliency against emerging pests and abiotic stresses.
Digital Commons Citation
Haque, Effi; Taniguchi, Hiroaki; Hassan, Md. Mahmudul; Bhowmik, Pankaj; Karim, M. Rezaul; Śmiech, Magdalena; Zhao, Kaijun; Rahman, Mahfuzur; and Islam, Tofazzal, "Application of CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing Technology for the Improvement of Crops Cultivated in Tropical Climates: Recent Progress, Prospects, and Challenges" (2018). Faculty & Staff Scholarship. 3033.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/faculty_publications/3033
Source Citation
Haque E, Taniguchi H, Hassan MM, Bhowmik P, Karim MR, S ́ miech M, Zhao K, Rahman M and Islam T (2018) Application of CRISPR/Cas9 Genome Editing Technology for the Improvement of Crops Cultivated in Tropical Climates: Recent Progress, Prospects, and Challenges. Front. Plant Sci. 9:617. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2018.00617
Comments
This work was partly funded by the Krishi Gobeshona Foundation (KGF), Bangladesh Project No. TF 50-C/17 and by the World Bank through a HEQEP CP # 2071 to TI. TI is thankful to the US State Department for the Fulbright Visiting Fellowship to work at West Virginia University during the preparation of this manuscript.