Department of Biosciences, Rajagiri College of Social Sciences, Cochin, 683104, Kerala, India.
Mol Biol Rep. 2022 Jan;49(1):773-781. doi: 10.1007/s11033-021-06975-w. Epub 2021 Nov 26.
Millets are small seeded cereal crops predominantly cultivated and consumed by resource-poor farmers in the semi-arid tropics of Asia and Africa. Millets possess rich nutrients and a climate resilience property when compared to the other cereals such as rice and wheat. Millet improvement using modern genetic and genomic tools is falling behind other cereal crops due to their cultivation being restricted to less developed countries. Genome editing tools have been successfully applied to major cereal crops and, as a result, many key traits have been introduced into rice, wheat and maize. However, genome editing tools have not yet been used for most millets although they possess rich nutrients. The foxtail millet is the only millet utilised up to now for genome editing works. Limited genomic resources and lack of efficient transformation systems may slow down genome editing in millets. As millets possess many important traits of agricultural importance, high resolution studies with genome editing tools will help to understand the specific mechanism and transfer such traits to major cereals in the future. This review covers the current status of genome editing studies in millets and discusses the future prospects of genome editing in millets to understand key traits of nutrient fortification and develop climate resilient crops in the future.
小米是一种小种子谷类作物，主要由亚洲和非洲半干旱热带地区资源匮乏的农民种植和食用。与大米和小麦等其他谷物相比，小米具有丰富的营养和抗气候能力。由于小米的种植仅限于欠发达国家，因此利用现代遗传和基因组工具来改良小米的进展落后于其他谷物。基因组编辑工具已成功应用于主要谷物作物，因此许多关键特性已被引入水稻、小麦和玉米。然而，尽管小米具有丰富的营养，但基因组编辑工具尚未用于大多数小米。黍稷是迄今为止唯一用于基因组编辑工作的小米。有限的基因组资源和缺乏有效的转化系统可能会减缓小米的基因组编辑。由于小米具有许多重要的农业特性，因此使用基因组编辑工具进行高分辨率研究将有助于了解特定机制，并在未来将这些特性转移到主要谷物中。本综述涵盖了小米基因组编辑研究的现状，并讨论了未来小米基因组编辑的前景，以了解营养强化的关键特性，并在未来开发具有抗气候能力的作物。
