Molecular approaches for improving nutritional quality in crops

Abstract

The increasing rate of occurrence of chronic diseases in the human population is creating a global awareness of consuming a healthy diet. It has been shown that regular consumption of a nutritious diet plays a vital role in the prevention of malnutrition as well as a variety of deadly diseases. Food is defined as functional if it provides additional benefits along with basic nutrition, either by reducing the risk of diseases or by improving the health state. There are different strategies and techniques for the identification and quantification of the desired phytochemicals, metabolites, and minerals in the crops and for introducing the superior alleles responsible for the desired traits in the germplasm. By using genome-level genetic studies like GWAS, the genomic regions can be identified that are responsible for the superior metabolic trait. Recently, precise genome editing using CRISPR/ Cas9 technology and overexpression of a few genes in crop plants offer to enhance the production of desired metabolites and micronutrients. Many crops have been produced in the last few years by altering the expression of genes via gene silencing, genome-level editing, mutagenesis, or other strategies of advanced genetic engineering. In this chapter, we summarize the different approaches for enhancing the yield and nutritional quality of crops. The successful attempts to increase the essential vitamins and micronutrients or other beneficial phytochemicals in the crops will be discussed. Altogether, we describe the application of different techniques and strategies to manipulate the genome or precise gene in the crop plants to enhance the food's nutritional quality.