Genome Editing for Biotic Stress Tolerance
Abstract
Globally, insect pests and diseases cause significant crop losses, leading to economic crises and food security issues. To meet human population demands and global food security, high-quality pest- and disease-resistant crops must be produced, despite conventional breeding strategies being labor-intensive. Genome editing is a sophisticated transgenic method for stress-tolerant targeting of genes involved in infection recognition, defense pathways, susceptibility, and pathogen/pest genes. Genome-editing technological advances, including meganucleases, transcription activator-like effector nucleases, zinc finger nucleases, clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/Cas9, and others, have improved plant immunity against pathogens and pests, achieving resistance with durable protection for sustainable agriculture. In this chapter, we carefully examine appropriate genome-editing techniques to impart host plant resistance to a variety of biotic agents, including insect/pests and similar pathogens, and their applications in crop plants. Furthermore, in this chapter, we explore the challenges and potential that will need to be completely realized for crop biological stress development in the future via contemporary genome-editing technology.
