Genetic Engineering of Crop Plants for Food and Health Security

This edited book support Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2): Zero Hunger. This book summarizes the contribution of genetic engineering for sustainable crop improvement toward global food and health security, climate resilience and economic growth. The book acts as a compendium of research reports on recent developments in the arena of cisgenics or transgenics or genome editing of crop plants for tolerance to biotic or abiotic stresses, introgression of value-added traits, molecular pharming etc. Sustainable crop productivity, yield and nutrition are the major constrain for food and nutritional security for the human population especially, in developing countries where arable land per capita is shrinking while the human population is steadily increasing. Zero hunger and achieving food security is the top priority of the United Nations development goals. This book explains various methods of genetic transformation such as transgenic, cisgenic, and genome editing for crop improvement. It also encompasses the advantages of genetic engineering in plants and their scope for sustainable crop improvement. The importance, limitations, challenges, GM biosafety regulations, recent advancements and future prospects of GM crops are covered in various chapters. This book is of interest to teachers, researchers, plant tissue culturists, GM crop experts, research scholars, academicians, plant breeders, policymakers etc. Also, the book serves as additional reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture, forestry, ecology, soil science, and environmental sciences. National and international agricultural scientists and policymakers will also find this to be a useful read.

Dr. Siddharth Tiwari is a Scientist-E at National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), Mohali, Punjab, India. He received his doctoral degree in 2008 from CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute (CSIR-NBRI), Lucknow, U.P., India. His area of specialization includes Plant Tissue Culture, Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering. Two major contributions were derived from his doctoral research. The first one was the development of a groundnut-seed-expressed edible vaccine against cholera and rabies and he received BioAsia Innovation Young Scientist Award in 2010. The second outcome was the development of insect resistance transgenic groundnut against polyphagous foliage insect Spodoptera litura and he received the 97th Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA) Young Scientist Award in 2010. He joined DBT-NABI, in July 2010 and presently working as Scientist E. His lab is working on metabolic engineering of staple crops like banana and wheat for nutri^40 graduate/post-graduate students in the various disciplines of plant biotechnology. He has recently (Jan. 2023) elected as a fellow of the prestigious Plant Tissue Culture Association of India (PTCA(I)).

Dr. Bhupendra Koul is an Associate Professor at the Department of Biotechnology, School of Bioengineering and Biosciences, Lovely Professional University (LPU), Punjab, India. During his Ph.D. at the Plant Transgenics Lab, CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow, he worked on the optimization, introduction, and expression of modified full-length and truncated versions of Bt-cry1Ab and 1Ac genes in tomato for developing non-chimeric and stable transgenic lines resistant to two lepidopteran insects (Helicoverpa armigera and Spodoptera litura) and evaluated the stability and efficacy of insecticidal toxin in transgenic plants. He has also optimized the regeneration and Agrobacterium-mediated transformation of Stevia (Stevia rebaudiana Bertoni) and has developed herbicide-resistant transgenic Stevia for effective weed-management in Stevia cultivation. He was awarded “CSIR-Senior Research Fellowship (SRF)” in the year 2013. He also has 9 years of teaching experience and received the “Teacher Appreciation Award 2016” from LPU in the Discipline of Biotechnology, through the MHRD Minister, Government of India. He has designed the full-length synthetic cry1Ac gene (GenBank: KP195020.1) and has published 57 research papers in national and international journals as well as 21 book chapters and 3 authored book with Springer Nature. He has guided 3 Ph.D. students and trained 20 post graduate students.