Application and Prospects of CRISPR/Cas Gene Editing Technology in Major Crop Molecular Breeding and Improving

Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat sequences (CRISPR) and their accompanying proteins (Cas), commonly presenting in bacteria and archaea, make up the CRISPR/Cas system. As one of the fundamental sources of nutrition for humans, edible crops play a crucial role in ensuring global food security. CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing has been applied to improve many crop traits, such as increasing nitrogen utilization efficiency, creating male sterile germplasm, and regulating tiller and spikelet formation. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the use of CRISPR/Cas gene editing technology in crop genomes, covering the targeted genes, the types of editing that take place, the mechanism of action. Finally, we also discussed the efficiency of gene editing and pointed the future direction on how to speed up crop molecular breeding, increase breeding effectiveness, and produce more new crop varieties with high qualities.