RNA interference and CRISPR/Cas9 techniques for controlling mycotoxins

Abstract

The manifestation of toxigenic fungi and their produced mycotoxins have proven to be a universal major agricultural calamity in maintaining secure safe nutritious food supply and a critical health issue in recent years. This is prevented by a spiked increment in the sullying of staple nourishments credited to different factors, for example, climate changes that favor mycotoxigenic fungal growth. Plant/crop development is governed by complex genetic regulatory networks/signaling pathways and it is through understanding these pathways, we can engineer crop assortments with improved yields, healthful properties, and better protection from fungal development/mycotoxin contamination. The understanding of the pathway of plant immunity from protection against pathogenic microorganisms is still in its infancy. The agriculture sector is currently experiencing an RNA interference (RNAi) and clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein-9 nuclease Cas9) revolution driven by genetically transforming and editing plants/crops for controlling mycotoxin contamination. The utilization of CRISPR/Cas9 and RNAi systems has an immense impact on understanding gene functioning and related properties. In this chapter, we discuss RNAi and CRISPR/Cas9 technologies that have been used to control mycotoxin contamination.