Improvement of Vegetables Through Molecular Breeding in a Changing Climate

A special issue of Horticulturae (ISSN 2311-7524). This special issue belongs to the section "Genetics, Genomics, Breeding, and Biotechnology (G2B2)".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 27 December 2024 | Viewed by 609

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Biological Sciences, SUNY Old Westbury, Old Westbury, NY 11568, USA
Interests: genomics; gene editing; large scale phenotyping

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change poses significant challenges to agriculture, impacting crop yields, resilience, and nutritional quality. Molecular breeding, also known as molecular-assisted breeding, is a promising approach to developing crops which are more resilient to climate change. Molecular breeding can assist in this direction by identifying traits that are tolerant to climate change and selecting desired traits at the molecular level, thus leading to the faster development of climate-resilient varieties. When integrated with other innovative technologies, both at the tissue or single-cell level, such as CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing, RNA interference (RNAi), and synthetic biology, this can further enhance crop resilience to climate change. Overall, molecular breeding offers a powerful toolset for developing climate-resilient crop varieties that can sustainably meet the challenges of a changing climate while ensuring global food security.

In this Special Issue, articles (original research papers, reviews, opinions, perspectives, and methods) that focus on vegetable molecular breeding, including germplasm resources, genome, evolution, development, genetics, stress, fruit quality, nutrition, cultivation, and postharvest, at all levels are most welcome.

Dr. Christos Noutsos
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • vegetable breeding
  • molecular breeding
  • crop yields
  • climate change
  • vegetable crop

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

11 pages, 2741 KiB  
Article
CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated BocPDSs Gene Editing in Chinese Kale Using the Endogenous tRNA-Processing System
by Yudan Wang, Rahat Sharif, Guangguang Li, Guoju Chen and Changming Chen
Horticulturae 2024, 10(12), 1244; https://doi.org/10.3390/horticulturae10121244 - 25 Nov 2024
Viewed by 403
Abstract
Chinese kale is a native vegetable from the Brassicaceae family that is grown extensively in Southeast Asia and Southern China. Its low genetic transformation and gene editing efficiency hinder gene function research and molecular biology in Chinese kale. CRISPR/Cas9 is a useful tool [...] Read more.
Chinese kale is a native vegetable from the Brassicaceae family that is grown extensively in Southeast Asia and Southern China. Its low genetic transformation and gene editing efficiency hinder gene function research and molecular biology in Chinese kale. CRISPR/Cas9 is a useful tool for plant genome research due to its rapid development and optimization. This study targeted BocPDSs, (BocPDS1, BocPDS2) to establish an effective CRISPR/Cas9 system in Chinese kale. A tandemly arranged tRNA-sgRNA construct was used to express numerous sgRNAs to induce BocPDS1 and BocPDS2 double and single mutations, with a mutation rate of 61.11%. As predicted, several mutant plants showed an albino phenotype with a harbored mutation in an exon and intron region, highlighting the relevance of the intron. The presence of mutations in the intron region suggests that the cleavage process in Chinese kale, utilizing CRISPR/Cas9 shows a preference for AT-rich regions. The distinct and somewhat redundant functions of BocPDS1 and BocPDS2 are demonstrated by the complete albino phenotype of the double mutants and the mosaic albino phenotype of the individual BocPDS1 and BocPDS2 mutants. Specific gene editing modes, including base deletion, base substitution, and base insertion, were identified in the sequence of the target gene. Among them, short nucleotide insertions were the most common type of insertion, with base insertions having the highest frequency (61.54%). Furthermore, no instances of off-target gene editing were detected. The current work demonstrated that the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing system, which relies on endogenous tRNA processing, can effectively induce mutagenesis in Chinese kale. This finding establishes a theoretical basis and technical backbone for the more effective implementation of CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology in Chinese kale and Brassica plants. Full article
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