Sugarcane is a popular crop around the world and essential for us, but we have always felt the need for the best and most environmentally friendly varieties. Now, thanks to Crisper technology, a type of sugarcane has been developed that is also more environmentally friendly.
Growing new sugarcane crops in the traditional way is not an easy task as it takes a lot of effort and time. Now a brand new type of sugarcane has been grown very fast with the help of CRISPR CS9 gene-editing technology.
Sugarcane is the largest source of sugar. Its leaf and stem oils provide environmentally friendly fuels such as bioethanol and also provide harmless plastics. But its environmental value is very high because it consumes a large area of sugarcane, which shrinks forests and requires a large amount of water to grow. Disposing of sugarcane waste after it has grown is a separate issue.
Now, thanks to across biotechnology, it is possible for specific genes for any crop and organism to be encapsulated, cut and separated, or replaced with useful genes. Thus, Crisper technology has played an extraordinary role in eradicating many genetic diseases.
But the genome of sugarcane is so complex because it has so many chromosomes and identical copies of the gene keep coming up. This makes it very difficult to identify the gene that causes a disease or disorder. But now the Department of Genetics at the University of Florida and the DOE Center for Advanced Bioproducts in the same city have jointly discovered some specific genes that can alter the appearance of the sugarcane plant.
In the first phase, scientists switched off the genes in sugarcane that were making magnesium chelate, an enzyme that helps the plant make chlorophyll. Now the plant loses its color due to its deficiency and its leaves become light green and yellow. Thus, light green sugarcane reduces the use of nitrogen fertilizer but has no effect on the crop and its health.
Similarly, in another study, individual nucleotides were introduced using crispers, which made them better able to compete with herbicides and thus required less spraying.
These two achievements will lead to the growth of sugarcane in fields around the world that will reduce many environmental problems and have no negative impact on their quality production.
The research is published in the latest issue of Genome Edit.
