Editorial: Recent Advances of Epigenetics in Crop Biotechnology

Ever since the first Agricultural Revolution, humans have domesticated hundreds of plant species and it is considered that the evolution of crop plants took place as human behavioral ecology changed from food gathering to farming. As a result of wild species domestication, the selection of populations with desirable alleles, the breeding of high yielding genotypes, the ease of farming and quality, and many technological advances have allowed crop production to increase and become better adapted to environmental changes (Bennett et al., 2013). During the last decades, modern breeding methods, as well as novel research, development, and new technologies have improved considerably agriculture production worldwide. This has been achieved thanks to the enhancement of agronomic traits such as, increased abiotic/biotic stress tolerance, reduced toxicity, bigger seed size, increased yield, superior nutritional quality, delayed ripening, better post-harvest quality, etc. (Meyer and Purugganan, 2013). However, due to an increasing human population, nowadays arable soil is becoming less available and the climate change problem is a worldwide emergency. Plants are indispensable in our life because they supply us with oxygen, food, and medicines. Therefore, it is important to study and examine the mechanisms that plants have evolved to adapt to diverse environments, and in particular how crop species deal with different types of biotic and abiotic stress. In addition, it is essential to understand how the epigenetic component regulates plant gene expression and the plant phenotype, and we must focus on how the epigenome works as a powerful source of diversity for important agronomical traits and on how its exploitation, in crop improvement programs, would be of benefit to our modern society. It is now known that epigenetic modifications control gene expression by modulating the access of regulatory complexes to the genome. Furthermore, current research on epigenetic mechanisms indicate that DNA methylation, histone posttranslational modifications and small non-coding RNAs are involved in almost every aspect of plant life including agronomically important traits such as flowering time, fruit development, responses to environmental factors, and plant immunity. Even though the basic epigenetic mechanisms in crop biotechnology are starting to be uncovered, soon they will be extensively employed for crop improvement and to increase crop productivity in challenge environments. This research Topic includes an excellent combination of Mini Reviews, Reviews, Original Research Articles, and Methods focused on the role of epigenetics in crop biotechnology, and provides up-to-date information on epigenetics in crop plants during in vitro culture, …