miRNAs for crop improvement

Climate change significantly impacts crop production by inducing several abiotic and biotic stresses. The increasing world population, and their food and industrial demands require focused efforts to improve crop plants to ensure sustainable food production. Among various modern biotechnological tools, microRNAs (miRNAs) are one of the fascinating tools available for crop improvement. miRNAs belong to a class of small noncoding RNAs playing crucial roles in numerous biological processes. miRNAs regulate gene expression by post-transcriptional target mRNA degradation or by translation repression. Plant miRNAs have essential roles in plant development and various biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. In this review, we provide propelling evidence from previous studies conducted around miRNAs and provide a one-stop review of progress made for breeding stress-smart future crop plants. Specifically, we provide a summary of reported miRNAs and their target genes for improvement of plant growth and development, and abiotic and biotic stress tolerance. We also highlight miRNA-mediated engineering for crop improvement and sequence-based technologies available for the identification of miRNAs associated with stress tolerance and plant developmental events.

Automated summary

Climate change has a significant impact on crop production by causing various abiotic and biotic stresses. To meet the demands of the increasing world population, efforts are needed to improve crop plants through modern biotechnological tools such as microRNAs (miRNAs). miRNAs play crucial roles in gene regulation and have been shown to enhance plant growth and development as well as stress tolerance. This review provides a comprehensive summary of the progress made in breeding stress-tolerant crop plants using miRNAs, including the identification of miRNAs associated with stress tolerance and the use of sequence-based technologies for crop improvement.