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Main Conclusion: This review discusses the Finger millet's rich nutritional profile, bioactive potential, and industrial applications, combined with its climate resilience, which make it a promising crop for enhancing food security and promoting sustainable agriculture. This review also highlights its significant potential to address malnutrition and mitigate climate change impacts. The emergence of Finger millet from "poor man's staple food" to "a nutrient rich cereal" has encouraged the need to explore this crop at a wider scale. It is a highly significant crop due to its rich nutritional and bioactive profile, diverse biological activities, and promising industrial applications, along with the high climate resilience. This comprehensive review evaluates its nutritional composition by comparing favorably with other cereals and millets and emphasizing its potential to address malnutrition and enhance food security. Furthermore, it explores the phytochemical/bioactive potential and strategies to enhance their bioavailability followed biological activities of Finger millet by highlighting its various health-promoting properties. The review also discusses industrial potential of finger millet including its role in nutraceutical and functional food production, as well as bioenergy generation. In addition, role of Finger millet as a climate-resilient crop; specifically, the available genetic resources and identification of genes and quantitative trait loci (QTLs) associated with major stress tolerance traits have also been discussed. By providing a comprehensive synthesis of existing knowledge, this study offers valuable insights for researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders engaged in efforts to promote sustainable agriculture, enhance food and nutrition security, and mitigate the impacts of climate change., (© 2024. The Author(s).)

There is a growing need to mainstream orphan or underutilized crops to enhance nutritional security and sustainable agriculture. Among these, Perilla frutescens L. is an important crop due to its rich nutritional and phytochemical content which makes it significant in nutrition, medicine, and industrial sector. Perilla seeds are mainly rich in ω-3 fatty acids, dietary fiber, amino acids, vitamins, and minerals, high α-linolenic acid, which contributes to their health benefits. This review explores the nutritional profile of perilla seeds and highlights its unique composition compared to other oilseed crops. It also analyzes the phytochemical components of perilla seeds and their various biological activities, including antioxidant, antidiabetic, antiobesity, cardioprotective, anticancer, antimicrobial, neuroprotective, and anti-inflammatory effects. These activities demonstrate the potential of perilla seeds in both pharmaceutical and food sectors. The review also covers recent advancements in genomics and transgenic research discussing potential areas for crop improvement. Additionally, it explores the use of perilla seeds in functional foods, blending perilla oil with other oils, and their applications in enhancing product formulations. This review offers valuable insights for researchers, students, policymakers, environmentalists, and industry professionals by detailing the potential of perilla seeds across various sectors. The findings support sustainable agriculture, crop diversification, and innovative product development, thus contributing to the integration of perilla into mainstream agriculture., Competing Interests: The authors assert that they have no conflict of interest., (© 2024 The Author(s).)

Main Conclusion: Differential expression of 128 known and 111 novel miRNAs in the panicle of Nagina 22 under terminal drought stress targeting transcription factors, stress-associated genes, etc., enhances drought tolerance and helps sustain agronomic performance under terminal drought stress. Drought tolerance is a complex multigenic trait, wherein the genes are fine-tuned by coding and non-coding components in mitigating deleterious effects. MicroRNA (miRNA) controls gene expression at post-transcriptional level either by cleaving mRNA (transcript) or by suppressing its translation. miRNAs are known to control developmental processes and abiotic stress tolerance in plants. To identify terminal drought-responsive novel miRNA in contrasting rice cultivars, we constructed small RNA (sRNA) libraries from immature panicles of drought-tolerant rice [Nagina 22 (N 22)] and drought-sensitive (IR 64) cultivars grown under control and terminal drought stress. Our analysis of sRNA-seq data resulted in the identification of 169 known and 148 novel miRNAs in the rice cultivars. Among the novel miRNAs, 68 were up-regulated while 43 were down-regulated in the panicle of N 22 under stress. Interestingly, 31 novel miRNAs up-regulated in N 22 were down-regulated in IR 64, whereas 4 miRNAs down-regulated in N 22 were up-regulated in IR 64 under stress. To detect the effects of miRNA on mRNA expression level, transcriptome analysis was performed, while differential expression of miRNAs and their target genes was validated by RT-qPCR. Targets of the differentially expressed miRNAs include transcription factors and stress-associated genes involved in cellular/metabolic/developmental processes, response to abiotic stress, programmed cell death, photosynthesis, panicle/seed development, and grain yield. Differential expression of the miRNAs could be validated in an independent set of the samples. The findings might be useful in genetic improvement of drought-tolerant rice., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.)

Traditionally, it has been believed that inheritance is driven as phenotypic variations resulting from changes in DNA sequence. However, this paradigm has been challenged and redefined in the contemporary era of epigenetics. The changes in DNA methylation, histone modification, non-coding RNA biogenesis, and chromatin remodeling play crucial roles in genomic functions and regulation of gene expression. More importantly, some of these changes are inherited to the next generations as a part of epigenetic memory and play significant roles in gene expression. The sum total of all changes in DNA bases, histone proteins, and ncRNA biogenesis constitutes the epigenome. Continuous progress in deciphering epigenetic regulations and the existence of heritable epigenetic/epiallelic variations associated with trait of interest enables to deploy epigenome editing tools to modulate gene expression. DNA methylation marks can be utilized in epigenome editing for the manipulation of gene expression. Initially, genome/epigenome editing technologies relied on zinc-finger protein or transcriptional activator-like effector protein. However, the discovery of clustered regulatory interspaced short palindromic repeats CRISPR)/deadCRISPR-associated protein 9 (dCas9) enabled epigenome editing to be more specific/efficient for targeted DNA (de)methylation. One of the major concerns has been the off-target effects, wherein epigenome editing may unintentionally modify gene/regulatory element which may cause unintended change/harmful effects. Moreover, epigenome editing of germline cell raises several ethical/safety issues. This review focuses on the recent developments in epigenome editing tools/techniques, technological limitations, and future perspectives of this emerging technology in therapeutics for human diseases as well as plant improvement to achieve sustainable developmental goals.