Not only is it sweet, but scientists use CRISPR-Cas9 to accurately breed sugarcane for the first time

Sugarcane is one of the most productive plants on the planet, providing 80% of the world's sugar and 30% of bioethanol

Researchers from the University of Florida and the US Department of Energy’s Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Biological Products Innovation (CABBI) recently published two new results, demonstrating the first successful precision breeding of sugarcane using CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing technology

CRISPR/Cas9 technology allows scientists to introduce precise changes in almost any gene, turn off the gene or replace it with a better version

In the first study, the researchers demonstrated the ability to turn off several copies of the magnesium chelator gene, a key enzyme required for chlorophyll biosynthesis in sugarcane, which can produce plants with light green to yellow leaves

The second study was also published in "Frontiers in Genome Editing".

The corresponding authors of these two papers are Fredy Altpeter of the University of Florida

Altpeter said: "Now we have very effective tools to transform sugarcane into a more productive or more sustainable crop

Sugarcane is a hybrid product of two parent plants, so it has multiple sets of chromosomes instead of only two sets of chromosomes like humans or diploid plants

In traditional breeding, two types of sugarcane are crossed, and the genetic information existing in the parents is re-adjusted in order to obtain ideal traits, such as disease resistance

Precise gene editing technologies such as CRISPR-Cas9 provide a more targeted approach to crop improvement, because it avoids the re-adjustment of genetic information, but simply turns inferior gene versions into high-quality versions

Altpeter and his team have applied these results to the improvement of sugarcane varieties

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Eid A, Mohan C, Sanchez S, Wang D and Altpeter F (2021) Multiallelic, Targeted Mutagenesis of Magnesium Chelatase With CRISPR/Cas9 Provides a Rapidly Scorable Phenotype in Highly Polyploid Sugarcane.

Oz MT, Altpeter A, Karan R, Merotto A and Altpeter F (2021) CRISPR/Cas9-Mediated Multi-Allelic Gene Targeting in Sugarcane Confers Herbicide Tolerance.