An assessment on CRISPR Cas as a novel asset in mitigating drought stress

Drought stress is currently one of the major threats to the global food security as it primarily is the main cause behind yield loss and hence overall productivity. While conventional breeding, molecular breeding and genetic engineering approaches were widely used in developing drought tolerant varieties, but these techniques are laborious, time consuming and also transgenics developed have some ethical issues hence are not widely accepted. Plant breeders and biotechnologists are now keenly approaching towards genome editing and using various genome editing principles for improving various agronomically important traits in plants. Among all available genome editing principles, the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat-Cas (CRISPR/Cas) system is widely accepted due to its robust nature, simplicity, adaptability, flexibility and wide applicability. CRISPR Cas's highly advanced technique of multiple sequence-specific nucleases has facilitated precise gene modification leading to development of novel climate resilient crops. In this review, we will try to understand the molecular mechanism of drought response in plants and the application of CRISPR/Cas genome-editing system for improving drought tolerance in plants for mitigating drought stress.