Genetic Engineering of Crop Plants for Food and Health Security

This edited book support Sustainable Development Goal 2 (SDG 2): Zero Hunger. This book summarizes the contribution of genetic engineering for sustainable crop improvement toward global food and health security, climate resilience and economic growth. The book acts as a compendium of research reports on recent developments in the arena of cisgenics or transgenics or genome editing of crop plants for tolerance to biotic or abiotic stresses, introgression of value-added traits, molecular pharming etc. Sustainable crop productivity, yield and nutrition are the major constrain for food and nutritional security for the human population especially, in developing countries where arable land per capita is shrinking while the human population is steadily increasing. Zero hunger and achieving food security is the top priority of the United Nations development goals. This book explains various methods of genetic transformation such as transgenic, cisgenic, and genome editing for crop improvement. It also encompasses the advantages of genetic engineering in plants and their scope for sustainable crop improvement. The importance, limitations, challenges, GM biosafety regulations, recent advancements and future prospects of GM crops are covered in various chapters. This book is of interest to teachers, researchers, plant tissue culturists, GM crop experts, research scholars, academicians, plant breeders, policymakers etc. Also, the book serves as additional reading material for undergraduate and graduate students of agriculture, forestry, ecology, soil science, and environmental sciences. National and international agricultural scientists and policymakers will also find this to be a useful read.