Genome editing in vegetable crops: a new era of sustainable agriculture.

The growing population, climate change and limited natural resources pose significant challenges to food and nutritional security. Vegetable crops are essential in achieving food security but face challenges from biotic and abiotic stresses. Improving vegetable varieties for environmental stress tolerance, especially with multiple resistance traits is a critical priority. Although, traditional breeding methods are valuable, they are often slow and require long breeding cycles to introduce desirable traits. Genome editing provides a precise and efficient method for crop improvement offering precise, efficient and targeted modifications. Technologies such as meganucleases (MegaN), zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs), transcription activator-like effector nucleases (TALENs) and CRISPR-Cas9 system enable targeted modifications to improve stress tolerance, quality traits and resistance to pests and diseases in various vegetable crops. Recent advancements in base and prime editing techniques further expand the potential of precision breeding by allowing single nucleotide changes without inducing double stranded breaks (DSBs) or inserting foreign DNA. Additionally, multiplex and epigenome editing in vegetable crops allow simultaneous modification of multiple genes and epigenetic traits. Notable applications of genome editing include lycopene content and parthenocarpy enhancement in tomato, starch quality, enzymatic browning and glycoalkaloid reduction in potato, browning resistance in brinjal, increased anthocyanin content in carrot, gynoecy and parthenocarpy in cucumber, herbicide tolerance in watermelon, salt tolerance in pumpkin etc. Thus, this review summarizes the evolution, mechanisms and applications of genome editing in various vegetables with emphasis on recent advances and their potential contribution to crop improvement.