title: Engineering food crops to grow in harsh environments.
abstract: Achieving sustainable agriculture and producing enough food for the increasing global population will require effective strategies to cope with harsh environments such as water and nutrient stress, high temperatures and compacted soils with high impedance that drastically reduce crop yield. Recent advances in the understanding of the molecular, cellular and epigenetic mechanisms that orchestrate plant responses to abiotic stress will serve as the platform to engineer improved crop plants with better designed root system architecture and optimized metabolism to enhance water and nutrients uptake and use efficiency and/or soil penetration. In this review we discuss such advances and how the generated knowledge could be used to integrate effective strategies to engineer crops by gene transfer or genome editing technologies.
authors.affiliation: StelaGenomics, Irapuato, Guanajuato, 36821, Mexico.
authors.forename: Damar
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: López-Arredondo
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio Nacional de Genómica para la Biodiversidad, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Irapuato, Guanajuato, 36821, Mexico.
authors.forename: Sandra Isabel
authors.initials: SI
authors.lastname: González-Morales
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio Nacional de Genómica para la Biodiversidad, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Irapuato, Guanajuato, 36821, Mexico.
authors.forename: Elohim
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bello-Bello
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio Nacional de Genómica para la Biodiversidad, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Irapuato, Guanajuato, 36821, Mexico.
authors.forename: Gerardo
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Alejo-Jacuinde
authors.affiliation: Laboratorio Nacional de Genómica para la Biodiversidad, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Irapuato, Guanajuato, 36821, Mexico.
authors.forename: Luis
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Herrera
keywords: abiotic stress; bacterial genes; biotechnology; gene overexpression; grain yield; plant development; plant nutrition