CRISPR immunizes potato against plant viruses, cutting production costs of globally important food crop

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Golden Potatoes: Vitamin-A fortified GMO variety could help tackle childhood blindness in Africa

Society and the legislative authorities are often cynical about the presence of [transgenes] in GMOs. However, more advanced plant breeding techniques like CRISPR system transcend this limitation through transgene-free products.

Potatoes are a major food crop globally, even having the potential to handle the rising world population. However, the cultivated potatoes are susceptible to plant viruses and cold-induced sweetening, which is the conversion of sucrose to glucose and fructose inside cell vacuole.

To address these limitations, crop breeding and genetic engineering strategies have been employed to improve traits of the crop. Genes/factors that make potato a vulnerable crop, i.e. eukaryotic translation initiation factors that help viruses infect the crop and vacuolar invertase are targeted using new breeding techniques.

[Editor’s note: Read the original study to learn more.]

One of these new breeding techniques is the CRISPR technology, which could reduce the cost of potato production. It is reported that this would most likely get through regulatory processes since it’s transgene-free.

Read full, original article: Crop Biotech Update July 10, 2019

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