Location: Cereal Disease Lab
Project Number: 5062-21220-025-047-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 1, 2026
End Date: Jul 31, 2028
Objective:
The overall goal of this project is to develop tools for rapid and efficient genome editing of all plant species utilizing viral vector system.
Approach:
Disease outbreaks can arise rapidly requiring an immediate and swift response to mitigate their impact. However, current research tools and methods to identify and transfer or generate plant resistance genes to incipient or future virulent pathogen attacks are slow. The underlying mechanism for generating advantageous variations in plants relies on tissue culture for transformation of totipotent cells, which is limited in plant species and is often genotype specific. We propose to overcome these limitations by developing a novel viral vector system to enable rapid and site-specific plant genome modification, adaptable to a multitude of genotypes and species, without tissue culture. Successful completion of this project will lead to a paradigm shift in crop improvement and detailed analysis of plant development. For the first time, this study is aimed at developing a tool that can be used in planta for the desired genetic modifications in multitude of plant species and genotypes.