New plant breeding techniques: CRISPR/Cas9 system

Conventional plant breeding for the most part involves the hybridization of two parents — a recurrent parent which has otherwise desirable attributes except for one or two traits, e.g. susceptibility to a disease, and a second parent called a non-recurrent parent which possesses the desirable trait missing in the former. After the initial hybridization, the offsprings with the new desirable trait are backcrossed to the recurrent parent to recover the rest of the desirable genome. By the 6th backcross generation, 99 percent of the recurrent parent genome would have been recovered. This backcrossing procedure makes conventional plant breeding time consuming, expensive and imprecise. For an annual crop like rice with a generation cycle of four months and twice a year planting, the process would take at least three years. However, for a perennial like coconut with a generation cycle of 6–8 years, the process could take 40–50 years. In addition [...]