CRISPR/Cas-Mediated Genome Editing in Plants

With over 820 million people facing hunger in today’s world, the need of the hour is the design of plant varieties with high yield, improved traits, and resistance properties in order to mitigate the detrimental impacts of biotic and abiotic stress conditions on food crops. This volume highlights the use of Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-associated nuclease proteins as a solution for sustainable agriculture. CRISPR/Cas-mediated genome editing (GE) provides a robust, simple, precise, efficient, economical, and revolutionary toolbox that leads to improved plant traits with enhanced yield, quality, and resistance against various stresses, including climate-related stress, insect pests and diseases, pollution-related stresses, etc. This volume presents a plethora of recent knowledge and findings by researchers related to the applications of CRISPR/Cas. Key features: Explains the differences between conventional breeding, genetically modified crops, and genome editing approaches using CRISPR/Cas. Introduces the tools of genome editing, such as ZFNS (zinc finger nucleases), mega nucleases, and TLENS (transcription activator-like effector nucleases). Covers the history, origin, discovery, structure, and classification of CRISPR/Cas. Discusses the mechanisms of action of CRISPR/Cas9, CRISPR/Cas12 and CRISPR/Cas systems. Examines the databases and computational approaches of CRISPR/Cas. Highlights genome editing of important crop plants with CRISPR/Cas systems, including wheat, maize. tomato, Brassica crops, rice, fruits. Explores potential applications of CRISPR/Cas systems for climate smart crops. This important volume provides valuable insight into the revolutionary technology of CRISPR/Cas for plant and crop enhancement for researchers, academicians, and students.