The CRISPR could do some 'culture of the land & # 39; the next main fruit crop

CRISPR-Cas9 is useful for all kinds of things, from creating heat-resistant cows to providing a potentially unlimited number of organs to transplant. Researchers at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Boyce Thompson Institute announced the latest achievement in gene editing technology: modifying a fruit so it can be grown for the first time outside of its home region in Mexico , in Central and South America. The rapid "domestication" of the fruit, which is assisted by technology, could mean turning the little-known shrimp into the next berry crop.

"We've kind of accelerated the domestication of the cherry to improve the characteristics that would be considered undesirable for agricultural production," Joyce Van Eck, Associate Professor at the Boyce Thompson Institute, told Digital Trends. "Groundcherry has a very wild and sprawling growth habit that makes it difficult to grow on a large scale. To make the cherry plant easier to handle, a plant can even grow in a pot on a terrace or balcony, we chose to target a gene called self-pruning. The reason we chose this gene is that in tomato, a relative of the earth cherry, a spontaneous mutation that occurred in a tomato field several decades ago resulted in a more compact plant. When we mutated the same gene in the Groundcherry cycle by CRSIPR, we recovered more compact plants, making them easier to grow. "

The work was done over a two-year period. If this sounds like a long time working on a project involving a semi-dark fruit, consider however that domestication of a plant through traditional breeding methods – as for classical crops like apple, tomato, corn and rice – takes thousands of years.

"Our hope is that what we learn can help accelerate the modernization, in a sense, of domestication, of plant species that have undesirable growth characteristics from the point of view of agricultural production so that their potential can be exploited as as new sources of fruit, vegetables, and grains, "continued Van Eck.

The team is currently working to improve other characteristics of the earth cherry, such as the problem of falling fruit on the ground: something common that gave it its name. They also aim to make the fruit bigger than its current size in marble, since a bigger fruit means greater agricultural productivity.

An article describing the work was recently published in Nature Plants.