A research team at Texas Tech’s Davis College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources is embarking on an ambitious effort to rewrite how scientists improve crops, aiming to bypass some of the most persistent bottlenecks in modern plant biotechnology.
The work is a transformative step forward in plant genome engineering. Eliminating dependence on tissue culture and transgene integration opens the door to truly scalable and rapid crop improvement.
Led by Degao Liu, an assistant professor in the university’s Institute of Genomics for Crop Abiotic Stress Tolerance, the project seeks to develop genome editing methods that eliminate the need for both transgenes and tissue culture; steps that have long slowed the translation of laboratory advances into field-ready crops.
Genome editing has been widely hailed as a transformative tool for agriculture, capable of enhancing traits such as drought tolerance, pest resistance and yield. Yet its real-world application has remained constrained. Conventional approaches typically require inserting foreign DNA into plant cells and regenerating whole plants through tissue culture, a process that is time-consuming, technically demanding and often limited to a narrow range of species and genotypes.
Even after successful editing, those transgenes must be removed through multiple generations of breeding to meet regulatory standards, further extending development timelines.
The Department of Plant & Soil Science team’s project - Planttransform: Versatile Virus-Mediated, Tissue Culture-Free, Genotype-Independent Genome Editing for Solanaceous Crop Enhancement - aims to circumvent those hurdles. By using plant viruses as delivery systems, researchers hope to directly edit the genomes of elite cultivars in a single step, without integrating foreign DNA or relying on tissue culture.
If successful, the approach could compress the timeline for developing improved crop varieties by several years. Liu said the goal is to “overcome the major bottlenecks in applying genome editing for crop improvement,” enabling researchers to introduce desirable traits into elite and commercial cultivars “within a single generation,” without the need for transgenes or tissue culture.
The platform is designed to support a suite of advanced genome editing techniques, including base editing, prime editing, targeted mutagenesis and large DNA deletions, and will be tested on tomato and pepper, crops known for their resistance to conventional transformation and regeneration methods. Among the targeted traits, Liu noted, are herbicide resistance, salt stress tolerance and improved water-use efficiency, characteristics that are increasingly critical as agriculture confronts climate variability and resource constraints.
The research is supported by a $468,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food & Agriculture through its Agriculture & Food Research Initiative. The Davis College team includes doctoral students Manman Hu and Yan Liang, as well as postdoctoral researcher Lingran Zhang.
For Luis Herrera-Estrella, director of the IGCAST institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the implications extend well beyond a single project. He described the work as “a transformative step forward in plant genome engineering,” adding that eliminating dependence on tissue culture and transgene integration opens the door to “truly scalable and rapid crop improvement.” The ability to edit elite cultivars directly, he said, could redefine how scientists develop resilient crops while aligning with regulatory and public expectations.
The project also reflects broader institutional priorities. Darren Hudson, associate dean for strategic initiatives and assessment and the Larry Combest Endowed Chair for Agricultural Competitiveness, said the work “directly addresses our strategic priority of meeting the challenges of water security through better plant genetics,” adding that tackling such “grand challenges through cutting-edge research” will help solve critical problems while advancing the college’s national standing.
Noureddine Abidi, associate dean for research in the college and Texas Tech’s interim associate vice president for research and innovation, framed the effort more broadly, saying the work reflects how faculty operate “at the intersection of ambition and impact, where hard work translates bold ideas into lasting contributions.”
CONTACT: Krishna Jagadish, Interim Chair and Professor, Department of Plant & Soil Science, Davis College of Agricultural Sciences & Natural Resources, Texas Tech at (806) 834-7953 or kjagadish.sv@ttu.edu
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