Green Revolution to Gene Revolution: Technological Advances in Agriculture to Feed the World

Abstract

Technological applications in agriculture have evolved substantially to increase crop yields and quality to meet global food demand. Conventional techniques, such as seed saving, selective breeding, and mutation breeding (variation breeding), have dramatically increased crop production, especially during the ‘Green Revolution’ in the 1990s. However, newer issues, such as limited arable lands, climate change, and ever-increasing food demand, pose challenges to agricultural production and threaten food security. In the following ‘Gene Revolution’ era, rapid innovations in the biotechnology field provide alternative strategies to further improve crop yield, quality, and resilience towards biotic and abiotic stresses. These innovations include the introduction of DNA recombinant technology and applications of genome editing techniques, such as transcription activator-like effector (TALEN), zinc-finger nucleases (ZFN), and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats/CRISPR associated (CRISPR/Cas) systems. However, the acceptance and future of these modern tools rely on the regulatory frameworks governing their development and production in various countries. Herein, we examine the evolution of technological applications in agriculture, focusing on the motivations for their introduction, technical challenges, possible benefits and concerns, and regulatory frameworks governing genetically engineered product development and production.

Genome Editing for Sustainable Crop Improvement and Mitigation of Biotic and Abiotic Stresses

“…Table 2 shows that “crispr”, “CRISPR/Cas9”, and “plant protein” are the three most used keywords in CRISPR-related plant research publications. Of several different types of plants/crops (e.g., model plants, food crops, industrial crops, and ornamental plants) [ 156 ], only the model plants (Arabidopsis and tobacco) and food crops (rice, tomato, wheat, maize and soybean) are present in the network map. Their total number of occurrences (shown in brackets) are as follows: Arabidopsis (673), tobacco (192), rice (525), tomato (239), wheat (224), maize (213), and soybean (134).…”

“…Further advancements in the CRISPR/Cas systems are oriented to expand its applications to other organisms and cell types and identify other alternatives to Cas9 proteins to improve CRISPR editing scope and specificity [ 156 ]. This is reflected by the presence of the keyword “cas” in the network map.…”

Strategies for the adoption of innovation processes in agricultural productive units of the Department of La Guajira -Colombia: Literary review and systemic approach

“…Finally, the studies on improvements in agricultural production processes are differentiated; they are the most recurrent since they include literature that describes changes and improvements in practices, whose purpose is to improve the productivity and operability of agricultural production units so that these changes are reflected in economic growth. In this sense, Hamdan et al (2022) describe how practices such as seed storage, selective breeding of species, and the implementation of breeding by mutation, which are considered conventional, managed to increase food production in what was called the Green Revolution; however, the authors alert that this model is finding a limit and call on research centers and agricultural producers to turn towards the genetic revolution, which manages to improve species through the combination and manipulation of DNA.…”

Genome Editing for Sustainable Crop Improvement and Mitigation of Biotic and Abiotic Stresses

“…1 shows that "crispr", "crispr/cas9", and "plant protein" are the three most cited keywords in CRISPR-related plant research publications. Of several different types of plants/crops (e.g., model plants, food crops, industrial crops, and ornamental plants) [118], only the model plants (Arabidopsis and tobacco) and food crops (rice, tomato, wheat, maize and soybean) are present in the network map. Their total number of occurrences (shown in brackets) are as follows:…”

“…Further advancements in the CRISPR/Cas systems are oriented to expand its applications to other organisms and cell types and identify other alternatives to Cas9 proteins to improve CRISPR editing scope and specificity [118]. This is reflected by the presence of the keyword "cas" in the network map.…”