By Gary Hartley

Pea becomes latest crop to undergo gene edit

Pea plants have been successfully gene-edited for the first time, with further developments in this area likely to lead to greater production of the crop.

Pea (Pisum sativum) has a significant role to play in sustainable agriculture, both as a rotation and cash crop. However, current breeding techniques can’t keep up with market demand.

CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing has showed strong potential as a route to quickly and affordably establishing desirable traits in crops that can increase production and resistance to environmental stressors, but until now, there had been no successful applications of the technique using pea plants.

In new research, Chinese geneticists successfully used the system for the first time, to edit the gene which causes albinism in the plant.

Still way to go for pea improvements

Despite the breakthrough, the system devised by the team of scientists requires significant refinements before it will be near commercial application. This is due to severely reduced survivability of the gene-edited plants and uncertainties around the stability of mutations. Another problem was with chimerism, whereby cells have more than one set of DNA.

As well as sounding the starting gun to further developments in this area, the researchers plan to build on the initial work by studying ways to use CRISPR to improve yield and stress responses in pea, as well as looking at broadening genetic diversity in the species.

“Our system will contribute to functional genomics research and release the potential of gene editing technology to improve agronomic traits in pea. Further, our work constructs a bridge to connect this basic genetic model to the modern gene functional era,” they concluded.

You can read the full research report in The Crop Journal.

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