Use of CRISPR- CAS to Save the Climate Affected Rice: A Review

Abstract

The productivity of agriculture has been greatly impacted by climate change, especially rice production, several biotic and abiotic stressors, including heat, salt, drought, heavy metals, rice blast, and bacterial blight, can severely reduce rice yields and jeopardize global food security. Numerous strategies have been employed in this regard to cultivate rice varieties that may be able to adapt to changing climate conditions. Nowadays, crop development has undergone a revolution thanks to gene editing (GE) technologies. As one of the most useful, dependable, affordable, and labor-efficient GE technologies available, the CRISPR/Cas (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats/CRISPR-associated protein) system has gained favor among plant researchers, notably rice breeders and geneticists. Since 2013 (the year the technique was first deployed in rice), CRISPR/Cas-based GE technologies have been employed to develop a variety of trait-specific climate-resilient rice lines. Several studies that have already been released attest to the effective use of GE technologies for rice development. However, this review's primary objective is to provide a succinct, thoroughly researched summary of the most current studies (starting in 2020) on the application of GE tools—particularly CRISPR-based systems for the production of CRISPR rice—to address the serious global climate change dilemma.