Cultivating the Future: Next-Generation Agriculture Biotechnology
Review Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21276/pt.2025.v2.i3.12Keywords:
Agriculture Biotechnology, CRISPR-Cas9, Genome editing, TALEN, ZFNAbstract
Agricultural sector is facing many new challenges such as climate change, rapidly increasing world population and the scarcity of resources due to ever increasing population. With climate change, population growth and resource depletion pose an unprecedented threat to global food security. While with the technological advances with time, new techniques have emerged which helped researchers to analyze and develop new cultivars in crops. The future of agriculture biotech is swift to transform the farm industry, offering new-age solutions for world issues. The present chapter deals with recent advancements in Agricultural biotechnology (specifically cutting-edge genome editing techniques and their role in crop improvement) by giving detail about the up-to-date gene editing tools like CRISPR-Cas9, ZFN and TALEN regarding its mechanisms, advantages of disadvantages of each type with respect to recently developed prime-editing technique which is considered as generation-next advancement. These new techniques provide unprecedented accuracy during genetic modifications. Various aspects of synthetic biology including 'omics' approaches are also discussed here. The present techniques may be useful to improve crop traits such as disease resistance, abiotic stress tolerance and nutritional content in different crop genotypes. The pros and cons of using these technologies to speed up breeding programs, develop new traits or to solve important agricultural issues are also discussed.
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