The power of CRISPR-Cas9-induced genome editing to speed up plant breeding

Abstract

Genome editing with engineered nucleases enabling site-directed sequencemodifications bears a great potential for advanced plant breeding and crop protection. Remarkably, the RNA-guided endonuclease technology (RGEN) based on the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) and CRISPR-Associated protein 9 (Cas9) is an extremely powerful and easy tool that revolutionizes both basic research and plant breeding. Here, we review the major technical advances and recent applications of theCRISPR-Cas9 systemformanipulation ofmodel and crop plant genomes.We also discuss the future prospects of this technology in molecular plant breeding.