Domestication of wild tomato is accelerated by genome editing

摘要

Crop improvement by inbreeding often results in fitness penalties and loss of genetic diversity. We introduced desirable traits into four stress-tolerant wild-tomato accessions by using multiplex CRISPR-Cas9 editing of coding sequences, cis-regulatory regions or upstream open reading frames of genes associated with morphology, flower and fruit production, and ascorbic acid synthesis. Cas9-free progeny of edited plants had domesticated phenotypes yet retained parental disease resistance and salt tolerance.