Genome-editing technologies and their potential application in horticultural crop breeding

• Published in: Horticulture research 2015-05, Vol.2 (1), p.15019-15019, Article 15019
• Main Authors: Xiong, Jin-Song, Ding, Jing, Li, Yi
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 631/1647/1511; 631/208/2491; 631/449/711; Agriculture; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Ecology; Life Sciences; Plant Breeding/Biotechnology; Plant Genetics and Genomics; Plant Sciences; Review; review-article
• ISSN: 2052-7276; 2052-7276
• DOI: 10.1038/hortres.2015.19

Plant breeding, one of the oldest agricultural activities, parallels human civilization. Many crops have been domesticated to satisfy human's food and aesthetical needs, including numerous specialty horticultural crops such as fruits, vegetables, ornamental flowers, shrubs, and trees. Crop varieties originated through selection during early human civilization. Other technologies, such as various forms of hybridization, mutation, and transgenics, have also been invented and applied to crop breeding over the past centuries. The progress made in these breeding technologies, especially the modern biotechnology-based breeding technologies, has had a great impact on crop breeding as well as on our lives. Here, we first review the developmental process and applications of these technologies in horticultural crop breeding. Then, we mainly describe the principles of the latest genome-editing technologies and discuss their potential applications in the genetic improvement of horticultural crops. The advantages and challenges of genome-editing technologies in horticultural crop breeding are also discussed. Plant breeding: New technologies for new varieties New breeding techniques based on ‘genome editing’ could be more efficient and acceptable than existing approaches. Currently, plant breeding uses hybridization, chemically or radioactively induced mutation, or insertion of foreign genes (genetic modification or ‘GM’). Jin-Song Xiong and colleagues of Nanjing Agricultural University, China, review the potential of new ‘genome editing’ technologies, whereby enzymes break DNA at selected sites, stimulating internal repair processes which can change the DNA sequence. Their review focuses on potentials and challenges of the most effective editing system, ‘CRISP/Cas’, which has already been used to modify both plant structure and color in rice. As well as increasing efficiency, genome editing avoids introducing genes from other organisms, making it less controversial than GM. As increasing numbers of plant genome sequences become available, this technique, which relies on detailed genomic information, is coming into its own.