Harnessing genetic variation at regulatory regions to fine-tune traits for climate-resilient crops

Climate change is making it more challenging to meet the food demands of a growing global population.Increased food produc-tion relies on continual crop improvements to generate higher and more stable yields,especially with increasingly unpredictable environments and less arable land.The improvement of traits that promote climate resilience and resource utilization,for example,greater photosynthetic capacity,increased nitrogen use efficiency,and optimized root and shoot architecture,repre-sents a promising avenue for engineering crops to yield more with less(Evans and Lawson,2020).A key challenge for crop engineering is optimizing performance in specific environments.