Shaping the Deep Tech Revolution in Agriculture 2025

The use of clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR) makes possible precise, targeted changes to an organism’s deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) to introduce desirable traits or remove harmful ones. CRISPR enables the bypassing of lengthy cycles of traditional breeding and can accelerate the development of crops with enhanced drought tolerance, pest and disease resistance, improved nutrient profiles and faster growth cycles. Its real-world impacts could include yield increases, reductions in pesticide applications and improved resilience to climate change.3.6 CRISPR Conventional crop-improvement methods can have long breeding cycles and limited precision, slowing the development of varieties suited to dealing with emerging climate and disease pressures. To overcome this, researchers from the Indian Council of Agricultural Research used CRISPR-based genome editing to develop two rice varieties.21 The first, DRR 100, has improved tolerance to drought, salinity and climate stresses. It can lead to a 19% increase in yield and a 20% decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. The other variety, Pusa DST Rice 1, can increase yields by 9.66% to 30.4% in saline and alkaline soils, and could potentially lead to a 20% increase in production. These results indicate how gene-editing can be used to accelerate varietal innovation at scale, with direct implications for productivity and agricultural resilience. CASE STUDY 4 Developing climate-resilient rice in India – Indian Council for Agricultural Research Shaping the Deep-Tech Revolution in Agriculture 20