The advantages of high input agriculture are fading away due to degenerating soil health and adverse effects of climate change. Safeguarding crop yields in the changing environment and dynamics of pest and pathogens, has posed new challenges to global agriculture. Thus, integration of new technologies in crop improvement has been imperative for achieving the breeding objectives in faster ways. Recently, enormous potential of genome editing through engineered nucleases has been demonstrated in plants. Continuous refinements of the genome editing tools have increased depth and breadth of their applications. So far, genome editing has been demonstrated in more than fifty plant species. These include model species like Arabidopsis, as well as important crops like rice, wheat, maize etc. Particularly, CRISPR/Cas9 based two component genome editing system has been facile with wider applicability. Potential of genome editing has unfurled enormous possibilities for engineering diverse agronomic traits including durable resistance against insect-pests and pathogens. Novel propositions of developing insect and pathogen resistant crops by genome editing include altering the effector-target interaction, knocking out of host-susceptibility genes, engineering synthetic immune receptor eliciting broad spectrum resistance, uncoupling of antagonistic action of defense hormones etc. Alternatively, modification of insect genomes has been used either to create gene drive or to counteract resistance to various insecticides. The distinct advantage of genome editing system is that it can knock out specific target region in the genome without leaving the unwanted vector backbone. In this article, we have reviewed the novel opportunities offered by the genome editing technologies for developing insect and pathogen resistant crop-types, their future prospects and anticipated challenges.

中文翻译：

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提高植物对虫害和病原体的抗性：通过有针对性的基因组编辑获得新的机遇。

由于土壤健康退化和气候变化的不利影响，高投入农业的优势正在消失。在不断变化的环境中保护作物产量以及病虫害和病原体的动态变化，对全球农业提出了新的挑战。因此，将新技术整合到作物改良中对于以更快的方式实现育种目标至关重要。最近，在植物中已经证明了通过工程核酸酶进行基因组编辑的巨大潜力。基因组编辑工具的不断完善增加了其应用的深度和广度。迄今为止，已经在超过五十种植物中证明了基因组编辑。这些物种包括模式物种，例如拟南芥，以及重要的农作物，例如水稻，小麦，玉米等。特别是，基于CRISPR / Cas9的两成分基因组编辑系统已经很容易应用。基因组编辑的潜力为工程化各种农艺性状（包括对虫害和病原体的持久抗性）的工程化提供了巨大的可能性。通过基因组编辑来发展对昆虫和病原体具有抗性的作物的新主张包括改变效应子与靶标的相互作用，敲除宿主易感基因，改造合成免疫受体以引发广谱抗性，解开防御激素的拮抗作用等。昆虫基因组已用于创建基因驱动或抵消对各种杀虫剂的抗性。基因组编辑系统的独特优势在于，它可以敲除基因组中特定的目标区域，而不会留下多余的载体骨架。在本文中，我们回顾了基因组编辑技术为开发抗昆虫和病原体的农作物类型提供的新机遇，它们的未来前景和预期的挑战。