Principles and Practices of Omics and Genome Editing for Crop Improvement

Global food security is increasingly challenging in light of population increase, the impact of climate change on crop production, and limited land available for agricultural expansion. Plant breeding and other agricultural technologies have contributed considerably for food and nutritional security over the last few decades. Genetic engineering approaches are powerful tools that we have at our disposal to overcome substantial obstacles in the way of efficiency and productivity of current agricultural practices. Genome engineering via CRISPR/Cas9, Cpf1, base editing and prime editing, and OMICs through genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, phenomics, an metabolomics have  helped to discover underlying mechanisms controlling traits of economic importance.

     Principle and Practices of OMICs and Genome Editing for Crop Improvement provides recent research from eminent scholars from around the world, from various geographical regions, with established expertise on genome editing and OMICs technologies. This book offers a wide range of information on OMICs techniques and their applications to develop biotic, abiotic and climate resilient crops, metabolomics and next generation sequencing for sustainable crop production, integration bioinformatics, and multi-omics for precision plant breeding. Other topics include application of genome editing technologies for food and nutritional security, speed breeding, hybrid seed production, resource use efficiency, epigenetic modifications, transgene free breeding, database and bioinformatics for genome editing, and regulations adopted by various countries around globe for genome edited crops. Both OMICs and genome editing are vigorously utilized by researchers for crop improvement programs; however, there is limited literature available in a single source. This book provides a valuable resource not only for students at undergraduate and postgraduate level but also for researchers, stakeholders, policy makers, and practitioners interested in the potential of genome editing and OMICs for crop improvement programs.

Dr. Channa S. Prakash is Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Tuskegee University, USA and also professor of crop genetics. Dr. Prakash’s research expertise is on genetic improvement research on food crops of importance to developing countries. His lab was among the first to develop transgenic sweet potato and peanut plants and conduct pioneering genomic studies on the peanut plants and conduct pioneering genomic studies on the peanut Dr. Prakash has been a global leader in enhancing the societal awareness of crop and food biotechnology issues, and was recognized for his outstanding work on agricultural biotechnology outreach with 2015 Borlaug CAST Communication Award, by the Council of Agricultural Science and Technology, which credited him as “arguably done more than anyone else in academia or industry to promote agricultural technologies that can help feed the world’s growing population.” He also serves as the Editor in Chief of the journal ‘GM Crops & Food. 

Sajid Fiaz, PhD, is an Assistant Professor working at Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, The University of Haripur, Pakistan. Dr. Fiaz received his PhD in Crop Genetics and Breeding from Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences during 2019. Dr. Fiaz’s research interests include marker assisted selection for agronomic traits, mutation breeding for biotic and abiotic stress resistance, QTL mapping and genome editing for yield and quality traits in cereals. Dr. Fiaz is actively supervising under-graduate and post-graduate students. He has been awarded with a Start-Up Research Grant Project from Higher Education Commission of Pakistan worth 1.0 Million PKR. He has published more than 74 research, 06 review articles and 10 book chapters with prestigious scientific magazines like International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Frontiers in Plant Sciences, Plant Physiology and Biochemistry and Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences. He is working as academic editorfor PLOS ONE, guest associate editor for Frontiers in Plant Sciences, review editor for Frontiers in Genetics and editing a special issue with Plants-MDPI focusing, Novel Plant Breeding Approaches for Achieving Zero Hunger. Currently, his lab group is working to identify genetic factors controlling drought stress tolerance in exotic and local landraces of rice.

Dr. Shah Fahad is a Professor in the Hainan Key Laboratory for Sustainable Utilization of Tropical Bioresource, College of Tropical Crops, Hainan University, Haikou, China. He obtained his PhD in Agronomy from Huazhong Agriculture University, China, in 2015. After doing his postdoctoral research in Agronomy at the Huazhong Agriculture University (2015–17), he accepted the position of Assistant Professor at the University of Haripur. He has published over 340 peer-reviewed papers (Impact factor 1150.18) with more than 308 research and 32 review articles, on important aspects of climate change, plant physiology and breeding, plant nutrition, plant stress responses and tolerance mechanisms, and exogenous chemical priming-induced abiotic stress tolerance.  He has also contributed 58 book chapters to various book editions published by Springer, Wiley-Blackwell, and Elsevier.  He has edited eighteen book volumes, including this one, published by CRC press, Springer, and Intech Open. He won Young Rice International Scientist award, Distinguish scholar award and Top young investigator award in 2014, 2015 and 2019 respectively. He won 15 projects from international and national donor agencies. Dr. Shah Fahad name figured twice among the top two percent scientists in a global list compiled by the Stanford University, USA as well as included in the Clarivate's 2021 list of Highly Cited Researchers in the field of Plant and Agriculture sciences. He has worked and is presently continuing on a wide range of topics, including climate change, greenhouse emission gasses, abiotic stresses tolerance, roles of phytohormones and their interactions in abiotic stress responses, heavy metals, regulation of nutrient transport processes.