抄録
Drought stress is a major constraint on crop productivity under climate change, yet the genetic improvement of drought tolerance remains challenging due to the polygenic nature of stress responses and limitations of conventional breeding. Gene-editing technologies, particularly CRISPR/Cas-based systems, provide a precise and efficient approach for dissecting and engineering complex drought-response networks. This review synthesizes recent progress in gene editing for improving crop drought tolerance from a mechanistic and translational perspective. It highlights key regulatory modules targeted by genome editing, including transcription factor networks (e.g., DREB and NAC families), phytohormone signaling pathways such as abscisic acid-mediated responses, osmotic adjustment processes, and reactive oxygen species scavenging systems, all of which collectively determine plant drought adaptability. Recent applications in major cereal crops, including rice, wheat, and maize, demonstrate that multiplex genome editing can effectively modulate stress-responsive traits and improve yield stability under water-limited conditions. The review further discusses key bottlenecks limiting field deployment, including transformation efficiency, off-target effects, regulatory uncertainty, and challenges in pyramiding polygenic traits. Emerging gene editing platforms, such as base editing and prime editing, are highlighted as promising tools for enabling precise, programmable, and trait-specific improvement of drought resilience. This review provides an integrated framework linking molecular mechanisms, editing strategies, and crop-level outcomes, offering a conceptual and technological foundation for accelerating the development of climate-resilient crop varieties.
