Conquering compacted soils: uncovering the molecular components of root soil penetration

Global agriculture and food security face paramount challenges due to climate change and land degradation. Human-induced soil compaction severely affects soil fertility, impairing root system development and crop yield. There is a need to design compaction-resilient crops that can thrive in degraded soils and maintain high yields. To address plausible solutions to this challenging scenario, we discuss current knowledge on plant root penetration ability and delineate potential approaches based on root-targeted genetic engineering (RGE) and genomics-assisted breeding (GAB) for developing crops with enhanced root system penetrability (RSP) into compacted soils. Such approaches could lead to crops with improved resilience to climate change and marginal soils, which can help to boost CO2 sequestration and storage in deeper soil strata. Land degradation and climate change represent serious threats to sustaining current food systems and global food security.Soil compaction deteriorates soil structure and fertility, precluding optimal root system development and diminishing crop yields.There is a need to design soil compaction-resilient crop varieties that can grow on marginal lands and, simultaneously, maintain high yields and boost CO2 harvesting and storage in the soil.Designing smart-rooting crops will pave the way towards a climate-smart agriculture. Using a combination of natural genetic variation, gene editing, and synthetic biology will aid in developing abiotic stress-tolerant crops with a high capacity of carbon sequestration.