Plant Genome Engineering for Targeted Improvement of Crop Traits

To improve food security, plant biology research aims to improve crop yield and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stress, as well as increasing the nutrient contents of food. Conventional breeding systems have allowed breeders to produce improved varieties of many crops; for example, hybrid grain crops show dramatic improvements in yield. However, many challenges remain and emerging technologies have the potential to address many of these challenges. For example, site-specific nucleases such as TALENs and CRISPR/Cas systems, which enable high-efficiency genome engineering across eukaryotic species, have revolutionized biological research and its applications in crop plants. These nucleases have been used in diverse plant species to generate a wide variety of site-specific genome modifications through strategies that include targeted mutagenesis and editing for various agricultural biotechnology applications. Moreover, CRISPR/Cas genome-wide screens make it possible to discover novel traits, expand the range of traits, and accelerate trait development in target crops that are key for food security. Here, we discuss the development and use of various site-specific nuclease systems for different plant genome-engineering applications. We highlight the existing opportunities to harness these technologies for targeted improvement of traits to enhance crop productivity and resilience to climate change. These cutting-edge genome-editing technologies are thus poised to reshape the future of agriculture and food security

Data-FlowerReflectanceSpectraCor_300-700nm

Flower spectral reflectance measurements, one reading every nm (from 300 - 700 nm), for different flower parts. Tab-delimited text file

Data-PhotosFlowerLabellum_BW

ZIP-Archive containing black-and-white JPEG images of flower labella, showing the shape of the speculum (in white) within the labellum. The first letter of the file name indicates species; E: O. exaltata; G: O. garganica; I: O. incubacea; S: O. sphegodes. These files constitute the input data for analysis of speculum shape

Data-PhotoFlowerRGB

Measurements of Red, Green and Blue pixel values from standardised flower photographs, for different flower parts (tab-delimited text

Data-FlowCytometry_2011-2012

Data from flow cytometry or pollinia for estimation of ploidy level, tab-delimited text file

Data-GBS_SRA_accessions

Table in tab-delimited text format that lists the NCBI sequence read archive (SRA) accession numbers corresponding to the plant individuals listed in Table S4. It lists plant sample name and accession, species and population, as well as SRA Experiment, Run and Sample accession numbers

Data-PhotoFlowerSize_cm

Measurements of different flower parts (in cm) from photographs

Data-GBS_Analysis-InputSourceFiles

ZIP archive containing genotype data from GBS experiments that can be used as input for downstream analysis. One file, GBS_data_INFO.txt describes the input in more detail. Briefly, the other data files are (1) a compressed Variant Call Format (VCF) file and (2) a STRUCTURE input file

Data-Pollinator_plot_experiments_S7

Tab-delimited text file for data in Table S7, giving values for the pollen-tracking experiment in two populations

data-phenology_S5

Tab delimited text file for data in Table S5, listing the number of open flowers per date (in DD.MM.YYYY format)