“Even primary school students and old farmers can master gene editing,” says [Southern University of Science and Technology, or SUSTech] scientist Zhu Jian-Kang, who has helped develop a new approach that could greatly simplify the difficult and time-consuming process of editing genes in plants.

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While conventional methods of heritable gene editing in plants often take months, and in some cases up to a year, this innovative approach could reduce the process to about two weeks, according to [Cao Xuesong, a scientist at SUSTech and a member of Zhu’s team], who is also the first author of the study.

After years of trying and searching, Zhu’s team has developed a new method called “CDB”, short for “cut-dip-budding”, which skips some of the tedious steps, including tissue culture.

In the three CDB steps, a part of the plant that is more likely to regenerate, such as a leaf or root, is first cut to create a “wound” and then ‘dipped’ into a solution containing a bacterium called Agrobacterium to help deliver the gene editor enzyme into the plant cells. Finally, the edited or modified cells are regenerated.

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Cao said the team had tested the technology on more than 20 plant species, and “it has the potential to become a general-purpose approach”.

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