Applications and challenges of harnessing genome editing in oilseed crops

Abstract

The ever-increasing demand for vegetable oil requirement has necessitated increasing the production of oilseeds crops. Productivity is compromised in these crops due to biotic and abiotic stresses. Albeit the substantial progress made in this direction through conventional breeding approaches, breeding for certain traits like stress tolerance is limited by the nonavailability of genetic variability for these traits in primary germplasm, the time required for selection and the realization of a suitable genetic assemblage from the segregating populations, etc. This situation has necessitated adopting alternate approaches to achieve the objectives. Genome editing technology offers a solution to modify the genome precisely with least genetic perturbation in the least possible time frame and it has been adopted in several crops including oilseeds. Genome editing technology depends on the genetic transformation step for introducing the machinery required for altering the genome. However, the recalcitrance for in vitro manipulations observed in oilseed crops such as castor, sesame, jatropha, etc. has set a limit for exploiting this powerful technology in oilseed crops. In this review, we have summarized the genome editing work carried out in oilseed crops and also discuss the possibility of employing such technologies along with the promising gene targets that could be manipulated to generate required variants in oilseed crops.