Plant Genetic Engineering: Nanomaterials-Based Delivery of Genetic Material

Plant genetic engineeringGenetic engineering is a potential tool to speed-up the process of developmentDevelopment of elite crop varieties with improved agronomic traitsTraits such as resistance to biotic, abiotic stressesAbiotic stress and improved nutritional quality. The two most widely used methodsMethod for geneticGenetics transformation of plants are Agrobacterium-mediated methodMethod and biolistic transformationBiolistic transformation. While Agrobacterium-mediated methodMethod has become the methodMethod of choice, it is limited to a few plant speciesSpecies. The biolistic methodMethod has been successfully employed in several plant speciesSpecies, however the methodMethod leads to multiple insertions in the plant genome. Precision genome editingPrecision genome editing enables changes at specific target sites in the plant genome resulting in the desired traitTraits improvementImprovement. Despite the success achieved in major plant speciesSpecies, plant transformation methodsMethod are still a major bottleneck for efficient transformation efficiency necessitating the developmentDevelopment of innovative approaches. In this context, nanomaterialsNanomaterial (NM) present a promising avenue for geneticGenetics transformation in plants. The key challenge lies in developing effective methodsMethod for delivering biomodifier-conjugated complexes to plant cellsPlant cell, with the aim of creating straightforward, robust, and efficient plant transformation techniques. Harnessing the capabilities of nanotechnologyNanotechnology, nanoparticlesNanoparticle (NP) serve as potent tools, forming binding complexes with biomodifier molecules like the CRISPR/Cas9 system. These complexes enable efficient delivery into plant cellsPlant cell, demonstrating the potential of nanocarriersNanocarriers in advancing genetic engineeringGenetic engineering. Progress on nanomaterialNanomaterial (NM)-based delivery systems for plant geneticGenetics manipulation heralds great promise for target specific engineering of plant genes. This chapter provides a detailed overview of the nanotechnologyNanotechnology-based techniques for plant transformation. We also deliberate on the advantages and limitations of nanoparticle-based non-viral vectors over the other existing methodsMethod of plant genetic transformation.