About this Research Topic
One of the greatest challenges that people will face in future is food security. Further concerns were raised regarding this issue due to changing climatic conditions and continuously growing population. Due to the constantly increasing population, it is estimated that the world population will exceed 9.6 billion until 2050. Food security is an important concern to feed this rapidly increasing population. Crops provide food, fuel, and many other consumable resources to humankind. Many food crops need improvement in yield and nutrients to feed the world population with healthy food. But the current improvement rate is not enough to fulfil the future demands. Considering the dietary requirements of the human population, there is a dire need of creating customized food products with increased yield and better quality.
Conventional cross breeding, mutation breeding and development of transgenic varieties through genetic engineering has been in use for developing improved varieties. These technologies have their own importance, but the production of food products with better qualities through conventional breeding can take years and there are many acceptance issues with food products developed through genetic engineering. In order to resolve current challenges, novelties are needed in crop breeding technology. Genome editing had made a significant contribution in crop improvement. It is interesting to see how creating customized food products is moving from traditional methods of crop improvement towards the use of genome editing tools to deal with food security.
This continuous revolution in crop breeding is crucial to meet the challenges and attain sustainable food production. Recent advances in genome editing tools including CRISPR-Cas based systems have revolutionized crop improvement. The genetic manipulation has become very precise, less time consuming and more feasible due the implementation of genome editing tools. The purpose of this Research Topic is to cover the application of genome editing tools, and their recent and innovative usage to deal with food security issue. We welcome articles related to this topic which may cover but are not limited to below aspects:
• Recent trends in genome editing technology to create customized food products
• Use of genome editing tools to deal future food security
• The nutritional improvement of food crops
• Developing resistance against biotic and abiotic stresses
• Exploitation of genome editing tools to increase quality and quantity of food
• Yield improvement of food crops
• Use of computational methods to predict editing targets in food crops
• Regulatory concerns of genome edited food crops
Conventional cross breeding, mutation breeding and development of transgenic varieties through genetic engineering has been in use for developing improved varieties. These technologies have their own importance, but the production of food products with better qualities through conventional breeding can take years and there are many acceptance issues with food products developed through genetic engineering. In order to resolve current challenges, novelties are needed in crop breeding technology. Genome editing had made a significant contribution in crop improvement. It is interesting to see how creating customized food products is moving from traditional methods of crop improvement towards the use of genome editing tools to deal with food security.
This continuous revolution in crop breeding is crucial to meet the challenges and attain sustainable food production. Recent advances in genome editing tools including CRISPR-Cas based systems have revolutionized crop improvement. The genetic manipulation has become very precise, less time consuming and more feasible due the implementation of genome editing tools. The purpose of this Research Topic is to cover the application of genome editing tools, and their recent and innovative usage to deal with food security issue. We welcome articles related to this topic which may cover but are not limited to below aspects:
• Recent trends in genome editing technology to create customized food products
• Use of genome editing tools to deal future food security
• The nutritional improvement of food crops
• Developing resistance against biotic and abiotic stresses
• Exploitation of genome editing tools to increase quality and quantity of food
• Yield improvement of food crops
• Use of computational methods to predict editing targets in food crops
• Regulatory concerns of genome edited food crops
Keywords: Genome editing, CRISPR-Cas9, Food Security, Agriculture, Food crops, Plants
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