Advanced epigenomic engineering in crop quality improvement

Recently, increasing studies have revealed epigenetic variations in crop development and quality formation providing new epigenetic sources for crop improvement. Ongoing advances in epigenomic technologies based on high-throughput sequencing provide new insights into epigenetic variations in important crop traits at a larger scale and higher resolution. The emerging epigenome editing tools enable us to manipulate the epigenetic modifications in specific loci and induce novel phenotypes as human demand increases. This review summarizes current epigenomic technologies corresponding to different epigenetic mechanisms and their applications in uncovering epigenomic variation in crop quality. Finally, we discuss the application of epigenome editing tools in crop improvement to meet food requirements and security by manipulating epigenetic changes in a site-specific manner.