Genome Engineering for Crop Improvement

5Development of Carotenoids Rich Grains by Genome Engineering

Vikrant Gautam¹, Gurwinder Singh Rana², Pankaj Kumar³, and Santosh Watpade⁴

¹ ICAR‐NBPGR, New Delhi, 110012, India

² AFC, New Delhi, India

³ ICAR‐CPRI, Shimla, 171001, India

⁴ ICAR‐IARI Regional Station (CHC), Shimla, 171004, India

CHAPTER MENU

• 5.1 Introduction
• 5.2 Nutritional Quality Improvement Through Pathway Engineering
  • 5.2.1 Strategies for Metabolic Engineering and Synthetic Biology in Plants
  • 5.2.2 Strategies for Synthetic Metabolic Engineering
• 5.3 Crop Improvement through Genetic Engineering Techniques
  • 5.3.1 Plant Multigene Transformation Vector Systems
• 5.4 Improvement of Carotenoid in Grain Crops through CRISPR/Cas9
• 5.5 Improvement of Carotenoid in Grain Crops Through RNAi
• 5.6 Future Perspectives and Conclusion

5.1 Introduction

All photosynthetic organisms such as plants, algae, cyanobacteria, some of non‐photosynthetic bacteria and fungi synthesize carotenoid (Figure 5.1), which is a group of isoprenoid metabolites (Liang et al. 2018; Rodriguez‐Concepcion et al. 2018). Carotenoids are an important natural product to animals and also very essential pigments to plants, it acts as both primary and specialized metabolites to fulfill multifaceted functions in plants.

Carotenoid performs a multitude of functions such as playing an important role in photosynthesis in plants; photoprotection acts as precursors to phytohormones such as ABA and strigolactones, providing color and aroma to flowers and ...