ABSTRACT
Climate change has a direct impact on biotic and abiotic stress factors affecting crop productivity around the world. To cope with climate change and growing demand for food security, it is therefore necessary to develop sustainable multiple stress-tolerant crops using modern biotechnology methods. Thanks to advancement in the genome editing technology (GEd), which uses precision genome engineering for targeted crop traits, GEd offers new prospects for crop improvement. The choice of candidate genes, on the other hand, is crucial for acquiring the desired features in the edited lines. CRISPR-Cas9 and CRISPR-Cpf1, as well as CRISPR-directed evolution, CRISPR-Cas12a, prime editing, and base editors have all been employed for effective genome editing in the development of crop plants that really can withstand diverse biotic and abiotic stresses. The use of multigene cassettes to generate several gRNAs, Csy4-based excision, arrays of crRNAs, ribozyme-flanked gRNAs, tRNA-dependent cleavage of gRNAs, and direct usage of Cas9 proteins preloaded with different gRNAs have all been used to express several gRNAs in vivo recently. Multiplex genome editing can be used to knockout multi genes or remove chromosomal segments to target negative regulatory genes for different stress responses in model plants and crops by simultaneously targeting numerous causal genes. Thus, this chapter summarizes and discusses the achievements and prospects of genome editing for imparting multiple stress tolerance in crops.
