CRISPR-enabled functional genomics for bolstering plant tolerance to abiotic and biotic stress; a comprehensive review

Harnessing CRISPR-Cas technology to enhance rice resilience under abiotic and biotic stress.

Overall, CRISPR-Cas-based genome editing represents a promising and efficient approach for accelerating the development of high-yielding, climate-resilient, and stress-tolerant rice cultivars, thereby contributing significantly to sustainable rice production and global food security under changing environmental conditions.

Synthetic Rice Genome and Epigenetic Engineering: Emerging Strategies for Climate-Resilient Crops: Review Article

Rice (Oryza sativa) is among the most important staple food crops in the world, serving as a main source of food security for approximately one-half of the world's population. Nevertheless, its cultivation is becoming compromised due to climate change, as repeated drought and saline soils, along with erratic temperatures, pose heavy restrictions on its yield. Traditional breeding and genetic engineering have contributed to enhancing crop performance; however, they are still constrained by the complex stress-responsive networks and by the time taken to develop tolerant cultivars. In order to overcome these challenges, technologies on the horizon, synthetic genomics and epigenetic engineering, are becoming game-changers in crop science. Synthetic genomics permits the refactoring and partial reassembly of plant genomes, thereby allowing new gene circuits to be built in, synthetic chromosomes to be installed, and multiplex editing via CRISPR-mediated alterations to increase drought tolerance or salinity resistance or boost photosynthesis in rice. Concurrently, epigenetic changes such as DNA methylation and histone modification, as well as non-coding RNA-mediated regulation, can impose a more dynamic and reversible layer of control on gene expression by modulating stress responses while leaving the actual DNA sequence unaltered. Emerging evidence indicates that certain epigenetic marks are capable of being 'remembered' across generations and could influence long-term resilience to stress. This review emphasizes the use of synthetic genomics-based epigenetic regulation as a new horizon in climate-resilient rice improvement.

Breaking the growth-defense trade-off in cereal crops: CRISPR/Cas and moonlighting proteins in biotic stress resistance

Drought-Resilient Crops for Sustainable Agriculture: Genetic, Physiological, and Agronomic Advances

Drought constitutes one of the most pervasive abiotic constraints limiting global crop productivity, with its frequency and intensity projected to increase substantially under ongoing climate change. This narrative review synthesises contemporary evidence on the genetic, physiological, and agronomic dimensions of drought resilience in major food crops, drawing on peer-reviewed literature published primarily between 2000 and 2026. Physiologically, drought impairs stomatal conductance, suppresses photosynthetic carbon assimilation, disturbs osmotic equilibrium, and restricts root-mediated water acquisition, with reproductive stages being disproportionately vulnerable. At the genetic level, the deployment of quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, transcription-factor engineering, CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing, and the overexpression of stress-responsive functional genes has opened novel avenues for enhancing tolerance without compromising yield potential. Breeding programmes have increasingly integrated marker-assisted selection (MAS) and genomic selection to accelerate genetic gain, whilst high-throughput phenotyping platforms now enable rapid assessment of drought-adaptive traits at a population scale. Agronomic strategies, including deficit irrigation, conservation tillage, intercropping, and application of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), provide complementary levers for sustaining productivity under water-limited conditions. Emerging integrative approaches that combine multi-omics, digital precision agriculture, and policy-enabled climate-smart frameworks are highlighted as critical pathways for translating laboratory and field insights into scalable solutions. The review identifies persistent knowledge gaps—including the limited translation of genomic advances to smallholder contexts and the underexplored potential of microbiome engineering—and calls for a convergence of disciplinary expertise, equitable technology transfer, and coherent policy support to achieve drought-resilient food systems globally.

Crop Adaptation to Combined Abiotic Stresses: Mechanisms and Microbial Partners (Review)

This review systematizes current knowledge on the types of CAS, their interactions, and their impacts on plant physiological, molecular, and microbiological processes, and extrapolates from established mechanisms to propose how microbes may mitigate combined stresses.

Crop Resilience to Combined Drought and Salinity Stress in Drylands: From Soil Processes to Genomic Solutions.

A unified framework that merges mechanistic discovery, microbiome-assisted breeding, soil and water management and systems-level predictive modelling is proposed, essential for developing climate-resilient crops to sustain dryland agriculture.