Application of CRISPR/CAS9 for Manipulating Vegetable Crops: A Review
Résumé
To fulfill the demands of a growing global population, vegetable crop breeding must balance preserving genetic diversity and nutritional value with increasing yields. Traditional breeding procedures are arduous and time-consuming, slowing development. However, recent advances in genome editing tools, notably CRISPR/Cas9, provide exciting opportunities for accelerating vegetable breeding by allowing precise modifications to the plant genome. CRISPR/Cas9 has transformed genetic manipulation by giving a diverse tool for precise gene editing, including knockout, insertion, deletion, and substitution. Its use in improving crop genetics, yield, quality, and resilience to biotic and abiotic stressors has been intensively researched. The practical applications of CRISPR/Cas9 in vegetable crops like tomato, cucumber, and eggplant have shown enhancements in drought and salinity tolerance, resistance to diseases, tolerance to herbicides, and fruit ripening regulation, thus affirming the technique’s significance across various physiological traits. Despite these advances, challenges remain in successfully delivering CRISPR/Cas9 components into plant cells. While off-target effects are a major concern, cytotoxicity is less commonly emphasized in plant genome editing. It might be clearer to say “ensuring specificity and minimizing unintended genetic modifications. Additionally, the introduction of genome-edited vegetable crops brings forth significant ethical and regulatory issues, especially regarding biosafety evaluations, intellectual property rights, and public acceptance, which differ markedly across various global jurisdictions. Nonetheless, CRISPR/Cas9 has demonstrated tremendous potential in vegetable crop development, permitting researchers to create varieties with increased resilience to environmental stresses, immunity to biological threats, herbicide resistance, and improved ripening time and quality. Especially, certain genome-edited vegetable lines are moving toward commercialization, indicating a change from experimental frameworks to translational research and field-level use. These advances illustrate CRISPR/Cas9 technology's transformational impact on vegetable breeding and its potential for addressing future food security challenges and its rapid advancements offer an urgent and indispensable solution for securing global food supplies amid climate change and population growth.