VipariNama: Combining CRISPR and systemic virus-based vectors for rapid phenotyping of complex plant traits

Abstract

A breeder's panacea would be to manipulate plant traits to their gusto e piacere(taste and pleasure). Tolerance to drought and salinity, resistance to pests and pathogens, selectiveresistance to herbicides, increased yield through timed flowering, and better nutritional or productive traits are some of the attributes crop breeders continuously aim to improve. The development of recent genome editing tools, most notable CRISPR/Cas9, promises faster and less expensive crop breeding. Many traits, including plant height and flowering time, are controlled by complex, multiloci genetic programs with both activation and repression mechanisms to tune plant development (Eshed and Lippman, 2019). Thus, there is a need for tools that allow rapid evaluation of spatial and temporal phenotypic outcomes resultingfrom gene expression level reprogramming.