Hyper-Recombinant Plants: An Emerging Field for Plant Breeding

Abstract Novelty is the primary requirement and breeding target for plant breeding, which can make a significant contribution to the new cultivar. The key factor for successful breeding is the genetic variation in the progeny, which depends on the degree of genetic material mixing after meiosis. However, meiotic recombination is tightly astricting in plants, resulting in a limited number of crossovers (COs). Recently, several anti-CO factors have been identified that limiting the meiotic recombination in plants, and the knock-out mutants displayed a significant increase in recombination frequency. This provides a universal tool to manipulate the meiotic recombination in plants by applying anti-CO genes, which will facilitate the breeding procedure. Due to the rapid development of genome sequencing and gene editing technologies, the genomes of more and more plants have been sequenced. In the meanwhile, the efficient CRISPR-Cas9 system has also been established in plants. Thus, it’s time to break the shackles of meiotic recombination to create novel cultivars in the biological era of genomics. Here we summarize the functional studies of the main meiotic recombination suppressors in plants, with the discussion of the possibility to apply the anti-CO genes in plant breeding as an emerging tool, especially for ornamental plant breeding.