Gene-edited wheat resists dreaded fungus without pesticides

Good news! This could be a game changer! Hopefully, more gene editing improvements to come!

"Powdery mildew certainly sounds unappealing, but for wheat farmers the fungus can mean a serious hit to the pocketbook. It infects crops, yellowing leaves and stunting growth. In countries where the blight is common, like China, the microbe can destroy up to 40% of a field, making it one of the most damaging and costly pathogens for wheat farmers. ...
If the yields are confirmed by further research, “this really could be a game changer” for wheat breeders ...
a gene, called MLO [Mildew resistance locus O], that when mutated somehow prevents the fungus from infecting the barley, apparently in part by quickly thickening cell walls when spores try to penetrate and having other nearby cells self-destruct. ...

Digging deeper into the genome of the modified plants, Gao and colleagues showed the editing had accidentally removed not only part of an MLO gene, but also a large stretch of DNA on one chromosome. This resulted in a nearby gene called TMT3 becoming more active, and this is what somehow keeps the plant growth normal.  ..."

From the abstract:

"... Here we describe Tamlo-R32, a mutant with a 304-kilobase pair targeted deletion in the MLO-B1 locus of wheat that retains crop growth and yields while conferring robust powdery mildew resistance. We show that this deletion results in an altered local chromatin landscape, leading to the ectopic activation of Tonoplast monosaccharide transporter 3 (TaTMT3B), and that this activation alleviates growth and yield penalties associated with MLO disruption. Notably, the function of TMT3 is conserved in other plant species such as Arabidopsis thaliana. Moreover, precision genome editing facilitates the rapid introduction of this mlo resistance allele (Tamlo-R32) into elite wheat varieties. This work demonstrates the ability to stack genetic changes to rescue growth defects caused by recessive alleles, which is critical for developing high-yielding crop varieties with robust and durable disease resistance."

Gene-edited wheat resists dreaded fungus without pesticides | Science | AAAS New strain survives powdery mildew, a costly disease, without side effects

Genome-edited powdery mildew resistance in wheat without growth penalties