CRISPR/Cas-Based Techniques in Plants

Utilizing mycorrhizal responses to guide selective breeding for agricultural sustainability

“…There is a positive correlation between root coarseness and plant MGR (Bergmann et al, 2020;Miller et al, 2012) -Williams et al, 2019). Future research of this type may disentangle the influence of plant morphological traits from mycorrhizal signaling pathways and provide multiple strategic breeding targets, especially in the context of gene-editing advances that continue to expand our capacity to stack multiple plant traits into modification events (Khan et al, 2021). As an attractive model and production crop, switchgrass represents another exciting opportunity to enhance mycorrhizal contributions across a wide array of agroecosystems.…”

“…Cutting‐edge tools are improving our capacity to design crop varieties that are locally adapted (Cortinovis et al., 2020), and development of CRISPR gene‐editing provides a reason for optimism regarding the future of appropriate crop development (Zhang et al., 2020). Gene‐editing enables additional options to stack multiple beneficial traits (Khan et al., 2021), for example genes associated with greater mycorrhizal reliance, into highly productive lines. Considering the findings of our current study, we advocate for eventual application of gene‐editing technology to use traits associated with locally adapted plant germplasm in agronomic varieties that meet the economic requirements of producers while simultaneously enhancing the nutrient‐use efficiency benefits of mycorrhizal associations in agroecosystems.…”