From Evolution to Revolution: Accelerating Crop Domestication through Genome Editing

Abstract

Crop domestication has a tremendous impact on socio-economic conditions and human civilization. Modern cultivars were domesticated from their wild progenitors, thousands of years ago by the selection of natural variation by humans. New cultivars are being developed by crossing two or more compatible individuals. But the limited genetic diversity in the cultivars severely affects the yield and renders the crop susceptible to many biotic and abiotic stresses. Crop wild relatives (CWRs) are the rich reservoir for many valuable agronomic traits. The incorporation of useful genes from CWR is one of the sustainable approaches for enriching the gene pool of cultivated crops. However, CWRs are not suited for urban and intensive cultivation because of several undesirable traits. Researchers have begun to study the domestication traits in the CWRs and modify them using genome editing tools to make them suitable for extensive cultivation. Growing evidence has shown that modification in these genes is not sufficient to bring the desired change in the neodomesticated crop. However, the other dynamic genetic factors such as microRNAs (miRNAs), transposable elements, cis-regulatory elements, and epigenetic changes have reshaped the domesticated crops. The creation of allelic series for many valuable domestication traits through genome editing holds great potential for the accelerated development of neodomesticated crops. The present review describes the current understanding of the genetics of domestication traits that are responsible for the agricultural revolution. The targeted mutagenesis in these domestication genes via CRISPR/Cas9 could be used for the rapid domestication of CWRs.

Plant genome information facilitates plant functional genomics

“…The genome evolution and phylogenomic research field will have an ever-growing amount of data available for analyses. Furthermore, there is a great potential for the use of functional genomics data for genome-editing of crops and for the de novo domestication for future crops using this same technology (Fernie and Yan 2019 ; Zhou et al 2020 ; Zaidi et al 2020 ; Gao 2021 ; Kumar et al 2022 ; Yu and Li 2022 ; Bartlett et al 2023 ). Importantly, when it comes to crop yield, knowledge is required how to properly evaluate this (Khaipho-Burch et al 2023 ).…”

Secondary metabolites that shape the permanent symbioses between Azolla ferns and nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria

“…The assembly and first annotation of the A. filiculoides genome opened the door for neodomestication (Li et al, 2018), which is the conceptualization of rapid and targeted domestication of plants into crops with modern technology (Gutaker et al, 2022). CRISPR-Cas9 methods make targeted gene editing way more efficient than traditional breeding techniques and circumvent a genetic bottleneck (Kumar et al, 2022). Transformation methods to deliver foreign agents into Azolla stem cells, however, have not yet been established.…”