Knowledge, Innovation and Technology in Scientific Research Vol. 2

Agricultural genome engineering has moved rapidly from double-strand-break-mediated mutagenesis towards base editing, prime editing, cis-regulatory engineering, epigenome editing, targeted integration and increasingly tissue-culture-free delivery. This expansion is often presented as a direct route to climate resilience and sustainable intensification, but molecular precision does not by itself establish durable agronomic benefit. This critical narrative review evaluates how next-generation genome-engineering platforms can contribute to crop adaptation to drought, salinity and temperature extremes, disease resistance, nutrient-use efficiency and yield stability, while examining the translational constraints that separate successful editing events from deployable cultivars. Literature published from 2012 to 6 July 2026 was identified through multidisciplinary and agriculture-focused scholarly sources, supplemented by citation searching and bibliographic verification. Evidence was appraised according to editing strategy, molecular validation, genetic background, regeneration and delivery route, phenotyping environment, agronomic endpoints, replication and translational relevance. The evidence is strongest where editing changes endogenous regulation rather than simply disrupting genes, where plausible physiological mechanisms are linked to yield under stress, and where effects have been reproduced beyond controlled environments. Field-validated examples nevertheless remain much less common than greenhouse or growth-chamber demonstrations. Delivery and regeneration remain major genotype-dependent bottlenecks, although developmental regulators, ribonucleoprotein delivery, meristem targeting and viral systems are reducing reliance on stable transgenes and conventional tissue culture. Base and prime editing expand allelic precision, while large-DNA integration and chromosome engineering could enable more ambitious redesign, but their efficiency, predictability and crop generalisability are still uneven. Sustainable outcomes also depend on trait architecture, genotype-by-environment interactions, stewardship, regulation, intellectual-property conditions and access to transformation or editing infrastructure. The next phase of agricultural genome engineering should therefore be judged by field durability, resource and risk outcomes, genetic-background breadth and equitable deployability, rather than editing efficiency alone.