Utilizing modern techniques and omics technologies to enhance stress tolerance in finger millet, with recent findings: A review

Finger millet (Eleusine coracana) is an important food security crop because of its nutritional properties and
powerful antioxidants, which enable the plant to withstand harsh environmental conditions. In addition,
research should be done on sustainable agriculture development systems for poverty eradication through finger
millet production and using its genomic resources as a strategy for other crop improvements. This review focuses
on the Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats and CRISPR-associated protein (CRISPR/Cas)
systems, advanced breeding such as speed breeding, omics technologies, and how they all combined for the crop
improvement strategy. CRISPR/Cas is a method used for altering genomes, specifically those of finger millets, to
create cereals that can survive various environments. Also, the review discussed the genes associated with salt
tolerance applied in the CRISPR/Cas genome editing technique, since salinity stress poses a great risk in agriculture fields. Plant breeding technology has contributed greatly to these achievements, such as speed breeding, genomic selection, genome editing, and high-throughput phenotyping, among others, which have improved
various aspects of crops, including their yield potential and quality traits like faster growth rates, disease
resistance levels, etc. High-throughput omics technologies, such as genomics, transcriptomics, and metabolomics, give molecular information for studying finger millet development.