Plant Breeding Becomes Smarter with Genome Editing

The conventional concept of plant breeding as art and science is shifting toward less art and more science due to the rapid development in genomics, transcriptomics, and the availability of advanced molecular tools. Conventional plant breeding methods were made rapid and more precise with the help of molecular markers. However, these methods lack ways to reduce or avoid unwanted variation incorporated during the transfer of any desirable trait. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats-CRISPR-associated protein 9 (CRISPR-Cas9), a genome-editing tool, has revolutionized plant sciences and made genetic studies more accessible and easier. This tool can supplement breeding methods in terms of creating precise and targeted variation for a trait and that too with negligible background variation. It can also be used to create new variations through chromosome engineering and targeted recombination, aiding in breaking undesirable linkages that otherwise cannot be broken by conventional plant breeding methods. Besides this, genome editing is also assisting in rapid de novo domestication of crop wild relatives, generating haploid-inducer lines, and developing apomictic hybrids. Genome editing is poised to remove many major bottlenecks of plant breeding.