Cooperación internacional e interdisciplinaria entre la Universidad de Costa Rica y The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.Plant breeding is directly linked to the development of crops that can effectively adapt
to challenging conditions such as soil nutrient depletion, water pollution, drought, and
anthropogenic climate change. These conditions are extremely relevant in developing
countries already burdened with population growth and unchecked urban expansion,
especially in the tropical global southern hemisphere. Engineering new crops thus has
potential to enhance food security, prevent hunger, and spur sustainable agricultural
growth. A major tool for the improvement of plant varieties in this context could be the
manipulation of homologous recombination and genome haploidization during meiosis.
The isolation or the design of mutations in key meiotic genes may facilitate DNA
recombination and transmission of important genes quickly and efficiently. Genome
haploidization through centromeric histone mutants could be an option to create new
crosses rapidly. This review covers technical approaches to engineer key meiotic genes
in tropical crops as a blueprint for future work and examples of tropical crops in which
such strategies could be applied are given.Universidad de Costa Rica/[736-B6-602]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[736-B5-A52]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[814-B5-A49]/UCR/Costa RicaUniversidad de Costa Rica/[736-B7-801]/UCR/Costa RicaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Agroalimentarias::Estación Experimental Agrícola Fabio Baudrit Moreno (EEAFBM)UCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Agroalimentarias::Jardín Botánico Lankester (JBL
