Understanding floral biology for CRISPR-based modification of color and fragrance in horticultural plants

Abstract

The global market of a total 42.4 billion US dollars of ornamental plants owes its worth to the color and fragrance associated with these plants. A lot of work has been done to understand the physiological, biochemical, genetic, and environmental factors responsible for the development of color and fragrance in flowers. The aim of these studies about the floral biology was to achieve the desired characters by manipulating all these factors to fulfill the changing demand of the global market. While, modifying flower color and fragrance, scientists moved from the traditional breeding methods to the comparatively modern genetic engineering techniques, yet limitations in results always remained a big issue for researchers. However, genome editing tools look promising to achieve the desired level of efficiency to modify the color and fragrance in the flowers. This review gives insight into the significance of floral characters, molecular factors responsible for these characters and applications of modern genome editing technologies for desirable modification.