Effectiveness of epigenetics in addressing climate change effects and the growing food demand

Abstract Agriculture is facing an imminent global food crisis due to the ever-burgeoning human population and the negative effects of climate change. These challenges are gradually outpacing food production rates due to slow and insufficient conventional crop breeding techniques. Epigenetics promises fast, reliable, objective, socially acceptable, adaptable, and dynamic food production. The study found several epigenetic markers and mechanisms and further documented the role of epigenetics in climate change adaptation and increased food production. These mechanisms include engineering climate-smart crops using epialleles, enhancing plants’ environmental stress memory, regulating transportable elements (TEs), altering plant growth and flowering cycles, and gene expression regulation through RNA silencing, DNA methylation, and histone modification. The study concluded that epigenetics should be fully harnessed to modify epialleles, improve crop varieties, and boost their resilience, productivity, and global food security. The study recommends concerted efforts between breeders, researchers, and farmers for effective knowledge sharing and implementation of epigenetics and highlights potential research areas and knowledge gaps that need to be filled.