**6. Concluding Remarks**

Advances in understanding agricultural genomes in tropical crops such as co ffee, cacao, and papaya may hopefully allow for adaptation to climate change and increased output. It is important to take timely advantage of the possibilities brought about by genome editing technologies in order to boost recombination and crossover formation and as a result, improve the transmission of novel traits. It may also be possible for the first time to take advantage of the downregulation of NHEJ to

create novel linkage groups and even to reverse natural chromosomal inversions between related species. Farmers in developing countries and their customers in developed economies may all benefit immensely from the adoption of these technologies.

**Funding:** This research was funded by Vicerrectoría de Investigación (University of Costa Rica) gran<sup>t</sup> numbers B8069, B6602 and B5A52. And the APC was funded directly by Vicerrectoría de Investigación.

**Acknowledgments:** Work at the Bolaños-Villegas laboratory was supported by grants B8069, B6602, B5A52 and B5A49 from Vicerrectoría de Investigación (University of Costa Rica), which also covered publication costs for this article. Pablo is a young member affiliate of TWAS/UNESCO and a member of the American Society of Plant Biologists. This manuscript was kindly edited by Ms. Laura Smales (BioMedEditing, Toronto, Canada). Images were kindly edited by E. Bolaños-Villegas.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The author declares no conflicts of interest. The sponsors had no role in the design, execution, interpretation, or writing of the study.
