Figure 1.

Developing disease-resistant rice: Comparison of conventional breeding, genetic engineering and genome editing. (A) In conventional breeding there will be cross of a donor variety having disease resistance and commercial variety having high yield but susceptible to disease. The new variety developed in this way will be disease resistant with high yield. However, undesired genes from the donor variety will be incorporated along with the desired gene. (B) For developing a disease-resistant variety through genetic engineering, we need to isolate the desired gene from the donor variety and introduce into the commercial variety. This will result in a GMO crop. (C) In genome editing the susceptible gene will be targeted and disrupted. So, the new variety created in this way will be disease resistant with high yield.