Crop improvement requires the constant creation and use of new allelic variants. Conventional breeding can be limited in providing the genes and alleles required to meet the agricultural challenges. In the past decade, genome editing can accelerate plant breeding by allowing the introduction of precise and predictable modifications directly in an elite background. The most promising utilization of the CRISPR/Cas9 and base editing systems can be used to generate targeted genome modifications including indels, insertions, replacements and based substitutions. The use of CRISPR in agriculture should be considered as simply a new breeding method that can produce identical results to conventional methods in a much more predictable, faster and even cheaper manner.
Caixia Gao is the principal investigator of Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology of Chinese Academy of Sciences in China. The research interests of her is about developing novel technologies to achieve efficient and specific genome engineering, and applying them to study the function of genes and modify plant traits for high-quality, disease resistance and stress tolerance in crop species.
For details of her research and recent publication, please visit HERE
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