Eliminating tissue culture from plant gene editing in the near future: A wish or reality?

Abstract

Traditional plant breeding methods alone are insufficient to guarantee food security for a growing global population under a changing climate, necessitating more advanced approaches to develop productive and resilient crop varieties. The development of genome editing tools, particularly CRISPR/CAS, are significantly speeding up crop improvement by enabling targeted breeding in most crop species. However, for many crop species, the need for tissue culture remains a major bottle neck, slowing the progress of crop improvement. In this review, we are presenting and discussing approaches for delivering genome editing tools into a wide variety of crop plants, including perennials, and ideally without integration of transgenes. We suggest that efficient non-tissue culture delivery systems for high-performance genome editing are needed to fully reach the genome engineering potential in crop plants. • Genome editing is significantly speeding up crop improvement • For many crop species, tissue culture remains a bottle neck of genome editing • Tissue culture-free approaches are emerging for model plants • Efficient crop improvement requires such approaches for all crops

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