Genome Editing in Potato Using CRISPR/Cas Technology: Applications and Challenges

Abstract

After rice and wheat, potato is the third most important food crop for human consumption. In Europe and several parts of America, potato is consumed predominantly. Like other vegetable crops, potato is prone to several biotic and abiotic stresses and due to climate change, such stresses are getting worse and affecting the yield and quality of harvested product. Both conventional breeding and transgenic approaches are being utilized to enhance the crop production by protecting the crop for different biotic and abiotic stresses. Genome editing technologies such as ZFNs and TALENs were earlier utilized for crop improvement. But recently, RNA-guided nuclease called CRISPR technology is in use for crop improvement. In potato, CRISPR/Cas is utilized for phenotyping, tuber quality, late blight resistance, potato virus Y resistance, herbicide tolerance, starch quality and biosynthesis, enzymatic browning, phosphate transport to roots and several other desirable traits. In this chapter, we summarize the information about major genome editing approaches and use of CRISPR/Cas in potato genome editing.