CRISPR/CAS9: AN APPROACH TO MEET GLOBAL FOOD DEMAND

The world’s population is increasing exponentially and will reach 9.7 billion by 2050. There is a dire need to increase food production to feed this fast-growing population. Conventional breeding techniques have enormously contributed to improving agricultural yield, climate change, biotic and abiotic stresses still pose a significant threat to crop productivity. New techniques are required to increase agricultural production to meet the rising global food demand. CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat)-Cas9 as a genome-editing tool has shown great potential to address emerging issues in agriculture. This approach can be utilized to alter any genetic sequence to get desirable characteristics in plants. CRISPR/Cas9 is more cost-effective and user-friendly than other current biotechnological techniques like zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs) and transcription activator-like effector nuclease (TALENs). This technology is also promising to produce non-transgenic gene-edited plants to cope with the adverse effects of changing climate and assure global food demand. CRISPR/Cas9 has improved almost every major crop, including wheat, rice, and barley. However, significant success stories have not yet been reported on many other vital crops that contribute much to the world’s food production, such as maize, sorghum, cassava, and potato. This review discusses the potential of CRISPR/Cas9 in crop improvement with updated information. Furthermore, it encourages applying this approach to the above-mentioned crops to meet global food security.