CRISPR/Cas technology is revolutionizing plant breeding, allowing genomes to be modified rapidly and efficiently for generating crop plants with new advantageous traits. Moreover, the unprecedented expansion and development of the CRISPR/Cas toolbox continuously enables novel applications to be exploited, for agriculture as well as synthetic plant biology.

This paper describes a new strategy to effectively use the increasing number of cloned genes related to source, sink and flow to support another wave of dramatic improvement of rice yield potential, guided by a system model of rice growth and development.

Human iron and zinc deficiencies are serious global health concerns. Iron and zinc homeostasis is tightly regulated in plants. By modulating mechanisms underlying iron and zinc uptake, translocation and storage, various biotechnological strategies succeeded in enhancing the iron and zinc concentrations in rice grains.

The tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle is one of the canonical energy pathways of living systems as well as being an example of a pathway in which dynamic enzyme assemblies or metabolons are well characterized. Given that a number of its variants in nature, here we discuss possible synthetic approaches involving introducing these variants, or at least a subset of them, into plants.

Photorespiration reduces yields of C3 crops such as wheat, rice and soybean by 20%-50%. Reducing the energetic demand and flux through the photorespiration pathway has potential for increased crop productivity. Here we summarize recent reports on ways photorespiration has been optimized or reduced to increase photosynthetic efficiency and plant productivity.

This review provides a comprehensive overview of the biotechnological approaches to generate rich sources of health-promoting glucosinolates, including comparison of glucosinolate production levels in hairy root and cell cultures of brassicaceous plants, in heterologousplant hosts like tobacco, and in the microorganisms Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae.