Use of gene editing to create water-conserving crops

Aim To generate, select and understand beneficial and practically-usable genetic variation in NCED using gene editing. Objectives

1. To survey all genetic variation in promoter sequences within tomato and other solanaceous crops, and combine this information with functional knowledge from our allelic series (i.e. ignoring variation where we have evidence it has no effect) to identify conserved motifs for targeting by gene editing.

2. To target NCED promoter motifs, especially motifs predicted to act as silencers that can be inactivated, with gene editing to create small sequence changes that may impact on gene expression.

3. To carry out destructive and non-destructive phenotyping experiments to assess: growth rates at different stages of development, photosynthesis, transpiration and water use efficiency at leaf and whole plant level. This will give further insights into trade-offs. 4. To investigate novel regulatory mechanisms for NCED gene expression of the native gene.