The natural increase of the world’s population implies boosting agricultural demand. In the current non-optimistic global scenario, where adverse climate changes come associated with substantial population growth, the main challenge in agribusiness is food security. Recently, the CRISPR/Cas system has emerged as a friendly gene editing biotechnological tool, enabling a precise manipulation of genomes and enhancement of desirable traits in several organisms. This review highlights the CRISPR/Cas system as a paramount tool for the improvement of agribusiness products and brings up-to-date findings showing its potential applications in improving agricultural-related traits in major plant crops and farm animals, all representing economic-relevant commodities responsible for feeding the world. Several applied pieces of research have successfully demonstrated the CRISPR/Cas ability in boosting interesting traits in agribusiness products, including animal productivity and welfare, crop yield growth, and seed quality, reflecting positive impacts in both socioeconomics and human health aspects. Hence, the CRISPR/Cas system has revolutionized bioscience and biotechnology, and its concrete application in agribusiness goods is on the horizon.

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated gene (Cas) system and RNA interference (RNAi)-based non-transgenic approaches are powerful technologies capable of revolutionizing plant research and breeding. In recent years, the use of these modern technologies has been explored in various sectors of agriculture, introducing or improving important agronomic traits in plant crops, such as increased yield, nutritional quality, abiotic- and, mostly, biotic-stress resistance. However, the limitations of each technique, public perception, and regulatory aspects are hindering its wide adoption for the development of new crop varieties or products. In an attempt to reverse these mishaps, scientists have been researching alternatives to increase the specificity, uptake, and stability of the CRISPR and RNAi system components in the target organism, as well as to reduce the chance of toxicity in nontarget organisms to minimize environmental risk, health problems, and regulatory issues. In this review, we discuss several aspects related to risk assessment, toxicity, and advances in the use of CRISPR/Cas and topical RNAi-based technologies in crop management and breeding. The present study also highlights the advantages and possible drawbacks of each technology, provides a brief overview of how to circumvent the off-target occurrence, the strategies to increase on-target specificity, the harm/benefits of association with nanotechnology, the public perception of the available techniques, worldwide regulatory frameworks regarding topical RNAi and CRISPR technologies, and, lastly, presents successful case studies of biotechnological solutions derived from both technologies, raising potential challenges to reach the market and being social and environmentally safe.

Fully sequenced genomes of Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris (Xcc) strains are reported. However, intra‐pathovar differences are still intriguing and far from clear. In this work, the contrasting virulence between two isolates of Xcc ‐ Xcc51 (more virulent) and XccY21 (less virulent) is evaluated by determining their pan proteome profiles. The bacteria are grown in NYG and XVM1 (optimal for induction of hrp regulon) broths and collected at the max‐exponential growth phase. Shotgun proteomics reveals a total of 329 proteins when Xcc isolates are grown in XVM1. A comparison of both profiles reveals 47 proteins with significant abundance fluctuations, out of which, 39 show an increased abundance in Xcc51 and are mainly involved in virulence/adaptation mechanisms, genetic information processing, and membrane receptor/iron transport systems, such as BfeA, BtuB, Cap, Clp, Dcp, FyuA, GroEs, HpaG, Tig, and OmpP6. Several differential proteins are further analyzed by qRT‐PCR, which reveals a similar expression pattern to the protein abundance. The data shed light on the complex Xcc pathogenicity mechanisms and point out a set of proteins related to the higher virulence of Xcc51. This information is essential for the development of more efficient strategies aiming at the control of black rot disease.

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Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is the main food crop for more than half of the world population but unfortunately, it is severely affected by blast, one of the most widespread and devastating plant diseases, caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae. Hence, the development of rice cultivars with greater resistance to blast is one of the main focuses of breeding programs. However, due to the complex biology of the pathogen, rice cultivars genetically resistant to the fungus become susceptible in a short period of time. In this context, the knockout of rice susceptibility genes represents a flourishing approach to obtain rice cultivars with a broader and longer-lasting resistance to M. oryzae. The present study aimed to use the genomic editing technology - CRISPR/Cas9 system, for knocking-out genes engaged with rice susceptibility to fungal infection. From previous transcriptomics results of two semi-isogenic rice lines - NILs infected by M. oryzae, potential rice-blast susceptibility genes were selected. The prospection of candidate genes for gene editing was complemented by a comparative shotgun proteomic analysis of the protein profile of the interaction between IRBLi-F5 (susceptible) and IRBL5-M (resistant) NILs in early stages of M. oryzae infection, that revealed a specific set of proteins potentially associated with susceptibility. After the characterization and validation of gene expression by RT-qPCR of the most prominent candidates, the target genes OsDjA2, OsERF104 and OsPyl5 were selected and submitted to a functional validation via gene silencing in planta, using antisense oligonucleotides (ASO), in which a clear reduction of leaf symptoms was observed in the compatible identification. Subsequently, the model japonica rice variety Nipponbare was transformed with simplex CRISPR/Cas9 vectors aiming to the independent knockout of each target gene. The T1 progeny of rice-edited plants, homozygous for the null (loss of function)-mutation were tested for blast resistance. As expected, mutant plants showed a decrease of disease symptoms in comparison with control lines (transformant non-edited plants). The results obtained in this study can contribute for the development of rice cultivars resistant to blast disease, besides shedding light on new potential rice-blast susceptibility genes.