CRISPR/Cas-Mediated Optimization of Soybean Shoot Architecture for Enhanced Yield

Abstract

Plant architecture is a crucial agronomic trait significantly impacting soybean (Glycine max) yield. Traditional breeding has made some progress in optimizing soybean architecture, but it is limited in precision and efficiency. The Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and CRISPR-associated protein (CRISPR/Cas) system, a revolutionary gene-editing technology, provides unprecedented opportunities for plant genetic improvement. This review outlines CRISPR’s development and applications in crop improvement, focusing specifically on progress regulating soybean architecture traits affecting yield, such as node number, internode length, branching, and leaf morphology. It also discusses the technical challenges for CRISPR technology in enhancing soybean architecture, including that the regulatory network of soybean plant architecture is complex and the development of multi-omics platforms helps gene mining. The application of CRISPR enables precise the regulation of gene expression through promoter editing. Meanwhile, it is also faced with technical challenges such as the editing of homologous genes caused by genome polyploidy, the efficiency of editing tools and off-target effects, and low transformation efficiency. New delivery systems such as virus-induced genome editing bring hope for solving some of these problems. The review emphasizes the great potential of CRISPR technology in breeding next-generation soybean varieties with optimized architecture to boost yield potential.