The agricultural industry has increasing threats from innumerable negative factors like drought, soil salinity, and the extreme temperatures, as the most noticeable worldwide. These constraints challenge the breeders to either improve existing cultivars or develop new cultivars of crop plants. With advanced biotechnology, the CRISPR-Cas (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats and associated Cas proteins) system is an effective tool for engineering certain features in various crops, including cotton, maize, soybean, wheat, and barley. Several agriculturally important traits have already gained improvements by using these tools; particularly, yield losses have reached reductions due to enhanced abiotic and biotic stress tolerance with improved quality, and the shelf life of fruits and vegetables is being prolonged. However, for maintaining global food security, the related research community should take measures toward searching for and developing new methods of agricultural advancements. Therefore, in the following review article, we emphasized on the effectiveness of applying the CRISPR/Cas system for improving drought, salt, cold, and heat tolerance in maize (Zea mays L.).
Maize (Z. mays L.), drought, salinity, cold, heat tolerance, gene, genome editing, endonuclease, CRISPR/Cas9
Uzbekistan is a region designated with high aridity, salinity, drought, and water scarcity risks. The CRISPR/Cas9 implementation in plant breeding has emerged as effective for broadening the horizons and managing crop problems with a new look. The CRISPR/Cas9 method was evidently highly beneficial in improving salt, drought, and extreme temperature tolerance in maize (Z. mays L.).