Nanotechnology-Enabled CRISPR Delivery: Emerging Opportunities in Agriculture and Forest Biotechnology

Genome editing is one of the key technologies in contemporary plant biotechnology, which has been revolutionized using CRISPR/Cas systems that offer rapid, flexible, and precise options to improve agricultural characteristics, enhance stress tolerance, and accelerate breeding of crops and trees. Despite the significant benefits of CRISPR/Cas systems, their use is restricted by difficulties in genome-editing materials into plant cells. The conventional approaches include Agrobacterium-mediated transformation, particle bombardment and PEG-mediated transfection; these have contributed significantly to advancements in the field; however, dependent on specific plants and requiring tissue cultures, these methods lead to random transgene insertion and poor transformation efficiency. In addition, nanotechnology represents a novel method of delivering CRISPR cargos into plant cells using minimal invasiveness and potentially without DNA. This review provides a synopsis of the most employed CRISPR/Cas systems within plants, comparing the traditional delivery mechanisms and the various nanotechnological delivery vehicles, such as lipid nanoparticles, carbon nanotubes, DNA nanostructures, mesoporous silica nanoparticles, magnetically responsive nanoparticles and green nanomaterials. This review discusses the present challenges of delivery efficacy, biocompatibility, cargo integrity, and regulatory issues, and provides suggestions for future research directions regarding nanotechnology-assisted genome editing for precision breeding, sustainable agriculture, production of crops tolerant to climate conditions, and forest biotechnology.