CRISPR/Cas editing for abiotic stress resilience in wheat: Target readiness, dosage constraints, and field translation

Abiotic stresses, particularly drought, heat, and salinity, increasingly threaten wheat productivity and yield stability under changing climatic conditions. CRISPR/Cas-mediated genome editing offers new opportunities to modify genes associated with stress adaptation, but its contribution to field-level wheat resilience remains limited. In hexaploid wheat, translational success depends not only on editing efficiency but also on homoeolog dosage, editing direction, pleiotropic risk, developmental stage, stability across environments, and breeding compatibility. This review evaluates CRISPR/Cas strategies and representative wheat stress-related targets using a structured literature search and evidence classification. Comparative analysis shows that readiness varies among target-edit configurations rather than entire stress categories. Many drought- and heat-related regulators have strong mechanistic support but limited dosage, reproductive, or field validation, whereas some salinity-related configurations show clearer physiological relationships but still require multi-environment testing. We therefore operationalize a CRISPR Translation Readiness Framework based on causal evidence, editing direction and homoeolog resolution, agronomic predictability, validation depth, and breeding deployability. Representative configurations are classified as exploratory, developmental, or advanced, with eligibility rules preventing detrimental edits from being prioritized despite strong functional evidence. Future progress requires regulatory and precision editing, realistic reproductive and yield phenotyping, transparent reporting of homoeolog configurations, and early deployment in elite germplasm. This translation-oriented framework provides basis for prioritizing CRISPR interventions with greater potential to support climate-resilient wheat improvement.

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