SYNTHETIC BIOLOGY ENGINEERING STRATEGIES FOR CLIMATE-RESILIENT AGRICULTURAL CROP DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Background: Greater environmental stresses such as drought, salinity, heat, and outbreak of the pathogens have been exaggerated by climate change and are significant threats to agricultural productivity and food security across the entire world. The traditional methods of breeding crops are not only slow but inadequate to meet the challenges of weather change, which are fast changing.

Objective: This paper reviews the synthetic biology engineering approaches in the quest to come up with climate resistant crop varieties that can withstand various abiotic and biotic stresses.

Methodology: Recent studies in the field of agricultural biotechnology were compared to develop CRISPR-based genome editing, synthetic gene circuits, metabolic engineering, transcriptional regulation systems, and stress-responsive pathway engineering.

Findings: Modifications in stress-relevant genes and metabolic pathways were shown to result in engineered crops that showed increased drought, salinity, and heat stress resistance. CRISPR-mediated editing enhanced water-use efficiency by about 35-50% in cereal crop models, synthetic transcriptional circuits were used to enhance biomass productivity and resistance to pathogens in stress conditions. Strong improvements were made by use of multi-gene engineering strategies to boost photosynthesis, antioxidant property and nutrient use that lead to almost 40 percent increase in the survival of stress in comparison to the conventional crops varieties.

Conclusion: Synthetic biology provides the radical developmental technology to develop climate resilient crops that are more productive, sustainable and also environmentally adaptable. Nevertheless, the concept of biosafety control, environmental evaluation and the field-scale validation is still one of the main issues of future application in agriculture.