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A CRISPR way for accelerating improvement of food crops

Nature Food volume 1, pages 200–205 (2020)Cite this article

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Abstract

CRISPR technology, which is widely used for plant genome editing, will accelerate the breeding of food crops beyond what was imaginable before its development. Here we provide a brief overview of CRISPR technology, its most important applications for crop improvement and several technological breakthroughs. We also make predictions of the applications of CRISPR technology to food crops, which we believe would provide the potential for synthetic biology and domestication of crops. We also discuss the implications of regulatory policy for deployment of the technology in the developing world.

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Fig. 1: CRISPR technology used for plant genome editing.
Fig. 2: Accelerated domestication of wild plants could broaden the diversity of food crops.

Blickwinkel / Alamy Stock Photo (a); Bilder ur Nordens Flora, Stockholm (b); David Cobb / Alamy Stock Photo (c); DE AGOSTINI PICTURE LIBRARY // gettyimages (d)

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Acknowledgements

We apologize to those colleagues whose work was not cited due to restrictions on the number of references. C.G. was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant no. 31788103) and the Strategic Priority Research Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Precision Seed Design and Breeding, grant no. XDA24000000), Y.Z. and M. Pribil by the Innovation Fund Denmark grant no. 8055-00038A, and M. Palmgren by the Novo Nordisk Foundation Challenge grant no. NNF19OC005658.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Copenhagen Plant Science Centre, Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Yi Zhang & Mathias Pribil

  2. NovoCrops Center, Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Michael Palmgren

  3. State Key Laboratory of Plant Cell and Chromosome Engineering, Center for Genome Editing, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, Innovation Academy for Seed Design, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Caixia Gao

  4. College of Advanced Agricultural Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Caixia Gao

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  1. Yi Zhang
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Contributions

Y.Z. drafted the first version of the manuscript. M. Pribil revised the manuscript, and C.G. and M. Palmgren designed and revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Michael Palmgren or Caixia Gao.

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Zhang, Y., Pribil, M., Palmgren, M. et al. A CRISPR way for accelerating improvement of food crops. Nat Food 1, 200–205 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-020-0051-8

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