Unlocking crop resilience through CRISPR Cas9 mediated gene editing against environmental stressors

Abstract

Abiotic stresses associated with climate change such as extreme temperatures, salinity, and drought pose major threats to plant health and agricultural productivity. Traditional strategies like conventional breeding and transgenic approaches have made notable contributions but face limitations including time consuming processes, lower precision, and regulatory constraints. Recent advances in genome editing have introduced powerful tools for the precise manipulation of stress-responsive genes. Among these, the CRISPR/Cas (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR-associated) system has emerged as a revolutionary technology due to its simplicity, efficiency, and versatility. CRISPR/Cas has been successfully used to knock out negative regulators of stress responses, activate beneficial genes, and edit key transcription factors involved in stress signaling pathways. It has enabled the development of crop varieties with improved tolerance to drought, salinity, and temperature extremes. Several studies also demonstrate its potential in fine-tuning regulatory networks without introducing foreign DNA. These advances underscore the transformative potential of CRISPR/Cas in crop improvement for climate resilience. Continued research and integration into breeding programs will be crucial for sustainable agricultural productivity under changing environmental conditions. This review highlights recent progress in the application of CRISPR/Cas genome-editing technologies for improving plant resilience to climate-induced abiotic stresses.