Breeding crop plants with increased yield potential and improved tolerance to stressful environments is critical for global food security. Drought stress (DS) adversely affects agricultural productivity worldwide and is expected to rise in the coming years. Therefore, it is vital to understand the physiological, biochemical, molecular, and ecological mechanisms associated with DS. This review examines recent advances in plant responses to DS to expand our understanding of DS‐associated mechanisms. Suboptimal water sources adversely affect crop growth and yields through physical impairments, physiological disturbances, biochemical modifications, and molecular adjustments. To control the devastating effect of DS in crop plants, it is important to understand its consequences, mechanisms, and the agronomic and genetic basis of DS for sustainable production. In addition to plant responses, we highlight several mitigation options such as omics approaches, transgenics breeding, genome editing, and biochemical to mechanical methods (foliar treatments, seed priming, and conventional agronomic practices). Further, we have also presented the scope of conventional and speed breeding platforms in helping to develop the drought‐smart future crops. In short, we recommend incorporating several approaches, such as multi‐omics, genome editing, speed breeding, and traditional mechanical strategies, to develop drought‐smart cultivars to achieve the ‘zero hunger’ goal.

The revolutionary technology of CRISPR/Cas systems and their extraordinary potential to address fundamental questions in every field of biological sciences has led to their developers being awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize for Chemistry. In agriculture, CRISPR/Cas systems have accelerated the development of new crop varieties with improved traits—without the need for transgenes. However, the future of this technology depends on a clear and truly global regulatory framework being developed for these crops. Some CRISPR-edited crops are already on the market, and yet countries and regions are still divided over their legal status. CRISPR editing does not require transgenes, making CRISPR crops more socially acceptable than genetically modified crops, but there is vigorous debate over how to regulate these crops and what precautionary measures are required before they appear on the market. This article reviews intended outcomes and risks arising from the site-directed nuclease CRISPR systems used to improve agricultural crop plant genomes. It examines how various CRISPR system components, and potential concerns associated with CRISPR/Cas, may trigger regulatory oversight of CRISPR-edited crops. The article highlights differences and similarities between GMOs and CRISPR-edited crops, and discusses social and ethical concerns. It outlines the regulatory framework for GMO crops, which many countries also apply to CRISPR-edited crops, and the global regulatory landscape for CRISPR-edited crops. The article concludes with future prospects for CRISPR-edited crops and their products.

Climate change significantly impacts crop production by inducing several abiotic and biotic stresses. The increasing world population, and their food and industrial demands require focused efforts to improve crop plants to ensure sustainable food production. Among various modern biotechnological tools, microRNAs (miRNAs) are one of the fascinating tools available for crop improvement. miRNAs belong to a class of small non-coding RNAs playing crucial roles in numerous biological processes. miRNAs regulate gene expression by post-transcriptional target mRNA degradation or by translation repression. Plant miRNAs have essential roles in plant development and various biotic and abiotic stress tolerance. In this review, we provide propelling evidence from previous studies conducted around miRNAs and provide a one-stop review of progress made for breeding stress-smart future crop plants. Specifically, we provide a summary of reported miRNAs and their target genes for improvement of plant growth and development, and abiotic and biotic stress tolerance. We also highlight miRNA-mediated engineering for crop improvement and sequence-based technologies available for the identification of miRNAs associated with stress tolerance and plant developmental events.

The demand for cotton fibres is increasing due to growing global population while its production is facing challenges from an unpredictable rise in temperature owing to rapidly changing climatic conditions. High temperature stress is a major stumbling block relative to agricultural production around the world. Therefore, the development of thermo-stable cotton cultivars is gaining popularity. Understanding the effects of heat stress on various stages of plant growth and development and its tolerance mechanism is a prerequisite for initiating cotton breeding programs to sustain lint yield without compromising its quality under high temperature stress conditions. Thus, cotton breeders should consider all possible options, such as developing superior cultivars through traditional breeding, utilizing molecular markers and transgenic technologies, or using genome editing techniques to obtain desired features. Therefore, this review article discusses the likely effects of heat stress on cotton plants, tolerance mechanisms, and possible breeding strategies.