BULLETIN 1
Changing the Color of Crops Could Help Robots Differentiate Crops from Weeds
ISAAA April 24, 2024

Figure: Photo Source: John Martin - Fotografo/Alamy | NewScientist

 

Boosting the blue pigments in plants through gene editing could make weeding easier. This is according to the article authored by Pedro Correia and other researchers from the University of Copenhagen in Denmark published in Trends in Plant Science.
Climate change rapidly impacts crops, thus the need for various ways to improve the tolerance of plants to stressors, such as weeds. This led the researchers to explore on adding signature traits to crops to be easily recognized by remote sensing. The researchers suggest gene editing of crops to target the genes linked to the production of anthocyanin and carotenoid, as well as changing the leaf and seed morphology to enhance the automated recognition of weeds in agriculture.
Read more in Trends in Plant Science.

 

BULLETIN 2

Novel Cas12 Base Editor Produces Herbicide Tolerant Soybeans

Chinese scientists used genetic engineering to produce soybeans that have a high level of herbicide resistance.
Soybean is an essential crop due to its oil and proteins. However, its cultivation is affected by weeds. Farmers use herbicides to remove the weeds, which may affect the soybeans. Because of this, herbicide-tolerant varieties are necessary in agriculture. Previous studies discussed the applications of Cas9 base editor systems on soybean but there have been no previous research about Cas12 base editor systems.
Researchers from various institutions in China used a Cas12-SF01-based cytosine base editor to produce soybeans with herbicide resistance. The novel BE4max-dCas12-SF01 cytosine base editor system converted the C codons of GmALS1 and GmALS3 to T codons. The newly-produced varieties were compared to wild-type plants. Their findings showed that there was no obvious change in the productivity and yield of the herbicide-tolerant varieties compared with the wild-type plants. Since their strategy was successful, it can now be tried on real-world applications.
For more information, read the article on Plant Biotechnology Journal.
See https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/ged/article/default.asp?ID=20777

 

BULLETIN 3

Review
Advances in the evolution research and genetic breeding of peanut
Hui Zhang, Yueyi Tang, Yunlai Yue, Yong Chen
Gene; 2024 Apr 3: 916:148425. doi: 10.1016/j.gene.2024.148425.

Abstract
Peanut is an important cash crop used in oil, food and feed in our country. The rapid development of sequencing technology has promoted the research on the related aspects of peanut genetic breeding. This paper reviews the research progress of peanut origin and evolution, genetic breeding, molecular markers and their applications, genomics, QTL mapping and genome selection techniques. The main problems of molecular genetic breeding in peanut research worldwide include: the narrow genetic resources of cultivated species, unstable genetic transformation and unclear molecular mechanism of important agronomic traits. Considering the severe challenges regarding the supply of edible oil, and the main problems in peanut production, the urgent research directions of peanut are put forward: The de novo domestication and the exploitation of excellent genes from wild resources to improve modern cultivars; Integration of multi-omics data to enhance the importance of big data in peanut genetics and breeding; Cloning the important genes related to peanut agronomic traits and analyzing their fine regulation mechanisms; Precision molecular design breeding and using gene editing technology to accurately improve the key traits of peanut.
See https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38575102/