Engineering Salt Tolerance in Crops by CRISPR-Mediated Genome Editing Technology: Target Traits, Present Perspective and Future Challenges

Salinity stress is a major determinant of agricultural production worldwide as it negatively affects crop yield and sustainable agriculture. Plant responses to salinity involve a coordinated signalling network consisting of sensing, early and late signalling which eventually culminates in altered gene expression and cellular response. Genome editing has the potential to target multiple facets of salinity response and therefore develop salt-tolerant crops. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-Cas system is the most popular genome editing tool that has been effectively applied to unravel different aspects of salinity stress response. In this chapter, we aim to portray that genome editing using CRISPR-Cas systems is gaining momentum to identify genetic determinants of polygenic traits like abiotic stress tolerance. This chapter revolves around the signalling events of salinity response, followed by the application of genome editing using CRISPR-Cas systems in breeding for salt tolerance. Integrating CRISPR tools with the latest breeding approaches should be the way forward to identify and validate the genetic determinants of plant stress response pathways and trait introgression to develop stress-resilient climate-smart crops.