Application of Mutagenesis and Genome Editing in Crop Plants

Mutagenesis and genome editing has emerged as a substitute to traditional plant breeding and transgenics for crop improvement and hence ensure sustainable food production. Plant breeding depends on combination of novel allelic variations which can be produced only by targeted or random mutagenesis. Mutagenesis has played a key role in the elucidation of plant growth and development mechanisms, adaptation, metabolic pathways, and signal transduction. During last few decades, different nucleases are capable of generating targeted mutations and have became important tools to improve gene editing and site-specific integration in various crop species. The rapid and exciting progress in genome editing for crop development has revolutionized plant breeding. This chapter provides insights on the methodology and applications of mutation induction and genome editing in crop improvement.