in flour for consumers. These are the major challenges which can be addressed by utilizing genome‐engineering mechanisms.
Genome engineering has been evolved as an efficient method for targeted mutation and modification in the genome of various organisms. During the last decade, genome engineering has been utilized for numerous trait improvement programs in several important crop plants. Genome‐engineering tools like ZFNs, TALENs, and CRISPR‐Cas system have been used for in‐vivo gene editing, as well as much biological pathway engineering for the nutritional improvement of various agricultural and horticultural crop plants. They have been of greater interest due to their precise editing mechanisms and very high specificity. Over the past few years, they have been utilized in numerous agricultural and horticultural crop plants including rice, wheat, legumes, tomato, potato, banana, grapes, etc. They are found to be highly specific and precise in their function. They have also been used for the engineering of numerous metabolic pathways to develop nutrient‐rich produce. They are used to decrease the anti‐nutrients in crop plants to improve bioavailability of minerals and vitamins, development of zero calorie/ sugar‐free potato, indigestible starch‐rich grains, allergenic gluten‐free wheat and various other processes. Further, they can also be used for the mobilization of minerals from unavailable locations to the bioavailable location for grains.
Researchers have been working hard to increase the nutritional value of various important crop species by increasing the nutraceuticals and minerals such as carotenoids and flavonoid‐rich cereals, tomato and fruit crops, iron‐enriched rice, maize, and wheat, etc. On the other hand, people are also working to decrease the anti‐nutrients such as phytic acids and other chelating elements in crops to increase the bioavailability of the available micronutrients. Further, development of sugar‐free potato and gluten‐free wheat, resistant starch rich rice and wheat is in great demand by people suffering from various diseases or as preventive measures.
The development of new strategies to cope up with the various challenges has always been a top priority over recent years. Agronomical practices, chemical applications, biofortifications and transgenic expression of protein‐coding genes have been explored to alleviate these problems to some extent. However, new and specific technology is always in demand. Genome engineering can be the best alternative for nutritional improvement of agricultural and horticultural crops. Further, it will be highly specific to a particular gene and plant, therefore, it has minimal bio‐safety risk. Taking this, together with progress made in crop improvement using genome engineering methods, this book has covered all the recent knowledge and development in the area related to the nutritional value, mineral and nutrient localization, and engineering for stress resistance as well as nutritional improvement of various crop plants. None of the currently available books have covered this topic at such a broad scale. Further, this area is of tremendous importance, not only in the present scenario but also for future decades.
Much effort has been made by all those involved to provide a well‐informed and knowledgeable book. I hope that this stimulates discussion and inspires future research and discussion on such an important topic.
About the Editor
Dr. Santosh Kumar Upadhyay is currently working as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Botany, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India. Prior to this, Dr. Upadhyay was DST‐INSPIRE faculty at the National Agri‐Food Biotechnology Institute, Mohali, Punjab, India. He did his doctoral work at the CSIR‐National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow and received his PhD in Biotechnology from UP Technical University, Lucknow, India. He has been working in the field of Plant Biotechnology for more than 14 years. His present research focuses in the area of functional genomics. He is involved in the characterization of various insect toxic proteins from plant biodiversity, and defense and stress‐signaling genes in bread wheat. His research group at PU has characterized numerous important gene families and long non‐coding RNAs related to the abiotic and biotic stress tolerance and signaling in bread wheat. He has also established the method for genome editing in bread wheat using CRISPR‐Cas system and developed a tool, SSinder, for CRISPR target‐site prediction. His research contribution led to the publication of more than 55 research papers in leading journals of international repute. Further, there are more than five national and international patents,17 book chapters and four books to his credit.
In recognition of his strong research record he has been awarded NAAS Young scientist award (2017–2018) and NAAS‐Associate (2018) from the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India, INSA Medal for Young Scientist (2013) from the Indian National Science Academy, India, NASI‐ Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award (2012) from the National Academy of Sciences, India, and Altech Young Scientist Award (2011). He has also been the recipient of the prestigious DST‐INSPIRE Faculty Fellowship (2012), and SERB‐Early Career Research Award, (2016) from the Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. Dr. Upadhyay also serves as a member of the editorial board and reviewer of a number of peer‐reviewed international journals.
Acknowledgments
I am thankful to the Panjab University, Chandigarh, India for providing the facility to complete this book. I am grateful to all the esteemed authors for their exceptional contributions and reviewers for their critical evaluation and suggestions to improve the quality of the text.
I would like to thank Miss Rebecca Ralf (Commissioning Editor), Miss Kerry Powell (Managing Editor) and Nora Naughton (Copy Editor) from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd for their excellent management of this project, and anonymous reviewers for their positive recommendations about the book.
I also appreciate the support of my research students whose discussion and comments were very useful in shaping this book. I thank Dr. Prabodh K. Trivedi, Dr. Praveen C. Verma, Dr. Krishan Mohan Rai, Dr. Sameer Dixit, Dr. Sudhir P. Singh and Dr. Prashant Misra for direct or indirect help with this project. I wish to express my gratitude to my parents and my beloved wife for her endless support, patience, and inspiration. I thank my daughter, who missed me during this project. I would like to warmly thank the faculties and staff of the department and university for providing a great working environment. Last, but not least, my sincere thanks to Lord Krishna for endowing me to live with joy and success in the form of this book.
1 An Overview of Genome‐Engineering Methods
Sushmita1,3#, Gurminder Kaur2#, Santosh Kumar Upadhyay4, and Praveen Chandra Verma1,3
1 Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, National Botanical Research Institute (CSIR‐NBRI), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India
2 Institute of Bioscience and Technology, Shri Ramswaroop Memorial University, Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh, India
3 Academy of Scientific and Innovative Research (AcSIR), Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, India
4 Department of Botany, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
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