Application of Genetic Engineering and Synthetic Biology in Crop Improvement

Dear Colleagues,

Crops are essential sources of food, feed, bioenergy, biomaterials, medicine, and ornamentals. The yield and quality of existing crops cannot meet the future demands of our society. For example, a 70 percent increase in global food production by 2050 will be needed to feed the future world population. This challenge is exacerbated by the reduction in arable land and clean water resources. Therefore, there is an urgent need to find novel solutions to these challenges without placing further burden on the environment. Genetic engineering and the interdisciplinary field of synthetic biology have great potential for plant improvement to meet the future demands of crop production. Many efforts have been directed towards the improvement in crop yield, stress adaptability, and crop quality (e.g., nutritional value and biomass composition) using synthetic biology and cutting-edge genetic-engineering tools. This Special Issue welcomes research and review articles to highlight the advances and perspectives in the development and application of innovative genetic engineering and synthetic biology technologies in various plant crops, including food crops, feed crops, fiber crops, oil crops, ornamental crops, medicinal crops, and industrial crops. Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to: 1) new technologies for plant genetic engineering and synthetic biology, such as plant transformation, genome editing, multi-gene stacking, and targeted insertion (knockin) or replacement of long DNA sequences, 2) genetic improvement in crop yield, 3) genetic improvement in crop quality, 4) genetic improvement in crop tolerance/resistance to abiotic and biotic stresses, 5) epigenetic engineering in plants, and 6) new methods for the phenotypical characterization of transgenic plants.

Dr. Xiaohan Yang
Guest Editor

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• genome editing
• metabolic engineering
• epigenetic engineering
• gene stacking
• pathway engineering
• plant
• stress tolerance