Germplasm

Doubled haploidy

Biology

Gene

Ploidy

Genome editing

Cas9

Genome

Botany

Computational biology

Chromosome

Genetics

Nature Biotechnology

Genome editing using CRISPR–Cas9 works efficiently in plant cells1, but delivery of genome-editing machinery into the vast majority of crop varieties is not possible using established methods2. We co-opted the aberrant reproductive process of haploid induction (HI)3–6 to induce edits in nascent seeds of diverse monocot and dicot species. Our method, named HI-Edit, enables direct genomic modification of commercial crop varieties. HI-Edit was tested in field and sweet corn using a native haploid-inducer line4 and extended to dicots using an engineered CENH3 HI system7. We also recovered edited wheat embryos using Cas9 delivered by maize pollen. Our data indicate that a transient hybrid state precedes uniparental chromosome elimination in maize HI. Edited haploid plants lack both the haploid-inducer parental DNA and the editing machinery. Therefore, edited plants could be used in trait testing and directly integrated into commercial variety development. Genome editing is induced in seeds during haploid induction, thereby enabling genome editing in monocot and dicot crops.

One-step genome editing of elite crop germplasm during haploid induction