Development of new, superior strawberry varieties with economically important traits is critical to the Florida strawberry industry. UF/IFAS strawberry cultivars are bred through conventional methods. While effective, the process is resource intensive and challenging due to strawberry’s complicated genetics. Over the years many advanced breeding selections have been identified for various levels of disease resistance, flavor and fruit quality. However, it is almost impossible to take that near-perfect selection and reshuffle the genetics for all desirable traits.
Recent advances in gene-editing provide a means to correct one or few deficiencies, if the gene or genes responsible for the trait of interest are known. This approach is known as CRISPR (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) technology. This is not GMO technology, and all indications suggest that gene editing will not be over-regulated, as the final product matches what may be done by conventional breeding. This technology has been extensively applied in many economically important agronomic crops, and is poised to make tremendous contributions to strawberry. We anticipate that gene-editing can be used to bring strawberries to the growers and industry with improvements in disease resistance, fruit quality and other valuable attributes. Gene editing will also fuel research efforts in gene discovery and characterization, leading to future strawberry breeding.
This application proposes to establish CRISPR-based gene-editing technology in strawberry that can be rapidly integrated into the UF strawberry breeding program. This application is to continue the research to establish gene editing system in cultivated strawberry. Results from this research will be utilized collaboratively with the strawberry breeder at GCREC to coordinate development of new varieties with disease resistance.
