Advances in Genetically Modified Plants by Employing Modern Biotechnological Tools: An Update

Abstract The formulation of plants with ameliorated high-quality attributes particularly disease impedance, protracted shelf-life and drought withstanding using prevailing breeding comes out to be immensely sluggish. Nonetheless, the consumption is day by day increasing by virtue of humongous growth in global populace and transformation in consumption patterns. In this connection, genetically modified (GM) crops provide viable basis for safeguarding food availability for burgeoning global community. Since their introduction from 1996, 100-fold increase in GM crop production has been observed and it is providing substantial multiple benefits to farmers. GM crops lend us ecstatic circumstances to upsurge food and feed yielding skilfully by causing plant between superior yield and superior nutritional yields by using various gene-editing methods. Genome editing of plants and genetic transformation have played an important role in GM crop production through beneficial novel genes insertion or silencing. However, transfer and assimilation of unfamiliar offshore genes at definitive pre-contemplated locale preclude umpteen intricacies linked with the extant gene transfer mechanisms. This chapter aims to provide information on advanced gene targeting techniques used in plants by employing zinc finger nucleases, transcription activator-like effector nucleases, and clustered regularly interspaced short palindrome repeats in recent years.