Harnessing genetic variation at regulatory regions to fine-tune traits for climate-resilient crops

Climate change is making it more challenging to meet the food demands of a growing global population. Increased food produc tion relies on continual crop improvements to generate higher and more stable yields, especially with increasingly unpredictable environments and less arable land. The improvement of traits that promote climate resilience and resource utilization, for example, greater photosynthetic capacity, increased nitrogen use efficiency, and optimized root and shoot architecture, repre sents a promising avenue for engineering crops to yield more with less (Evans and Lawson, 2020). A key challenge for crop engineering is optimizing performance in specific environments. At the molecular level, genetic variation can affect the levels, timing, and activity of gene products, for example, changing gene expression, protein levels, or enzyme activity. Variation that leads to loss of function is often associated with extreme changes in phenotype. While this can dramatically increase tolerance in specific environments, for some genes this also causes pleiotropic consequences and yield trade-offs (Mickelbart et al., 2015). To address the challenges of the future, we should have the ability to generate a range of phenotypes for key agronomic traits, including mild and intermediate variation, to fine-tune performance for different circumstances.