CRISPR Gene Editing Technology for Sustainable Weed Management: A Critical Narrative Review

Abstract

Weed management is increasingly constrained by herbicide resistance, shrinking chemical options, rising production costs, and the ecological consequences of repeated reliance on a small number of control tactics. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)-associated genome editing has therefore attracted attention as a possible component of more sustainable weed management. This critical narrative review evaluates the evidence available through 29 May 2026 across four distinct intervention pathways: editing crops for selective herbicide tolerance; editing crop hosts to resist parasitic weeds; editing weeds for functional genomics or direct fitness manipulation; and developing gene-drive systems for population suppression or restoration of herbicide susceptibility. The evidence is most mature for crop-centred applications. Base editing, prime editing, homology-directed repair, and non-homologous end joining have produced herbicide-tolerant rice, wheat, maize, oilseed rape, soybean, sugarcane, and sorghum, while host editing has reduced infection by Phelipanche aegyptiaca and Striga hermonthica in controlled experiments. These studies establish technical feasibility but rarely measure system-level outcomes such as herbicide-use trajectories, seed-bank decline, biodiversity, net energy demand, multi-season yield stability, or farmer profitability. Direct editing of major weeds remains uncommon because transformation, regeneration, polyploidy, heterogeneous populations, and non-target-site resistance complicate target validation and deployment. Plant gene drives have progressed from theoretical designs to proof-of-principle inheritance bias in Arabidopsis thaliana, yet no field-ready weed drive has been demonstrated, and containment, resistance evolution, seed banks, gene flow, and governance remain decisive barriers. Sustainable use of CRISPR will therefore depend less on whether an edit produces a desired phenotype than on whether it diversifies selection, reduces total control burdens, and functions within integrated weed management. Priority research should combine molecular precision with population ecology, multi-environment trials, stewardship, transparent regulation, and participatory assessment of benefits and risks.