Applications of CRISPR/Cas to Improve Crop Disease Resistance: Beyond Inactivation of Susceptibility Factors

• Main Authors: Dirk Schenke, Daguang Cai
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2020-09-01
• Series: iScience
• Subjects: Biological Sciences; Biotechnology; Plant Biotechnology; Plant Biology; Plant Genetics
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004220306702

Summary: Current crop production systems are prone to increasing pathogen pressure. Fundamental understanding of molecular plant-pathogen interactions, the availability of crop and pathogen genomic information, as well as emerging genome editing permits a novel approach for breeding of crop disease resistance. We describe here strategies to identify new targets for resistance breeding with focus on interruption of the compatible plant-pathogen interaction by CRISPR/Cas-mediated genome editing. Basically, crop genome editing can be applied in several ways to achieve this goal. The most common approach focuses on the “simple” knockout by non-homologous end joining repair of plant susceptibility factors required for efficient host colonization. However, genome re-writing via homology-directed repair or base editing can also prevent host manipulation by changing the targets of pathogen-derived effectors or molecules beyond recognition, which also decreases plant susceptibility. We conclude that genome editing by CRISPR/Cas will become increasingly indispensable to generate in relatively short time beneficial resistance traits in crops to meet upcoming challenges.