Abstract:Filamentous fungi serve as indispensable microbial cell factories in the global food industry.They not only form the core of traditional fermented foods such as soy sauce and sufu （fermented bean curd） but also act as the principal producers of critical food additives like organic acids and enzyme preparations.More recently,they have demonstrated enormous potential in the realm of novel foods,including mycoprotein.Yet their inherent metabolic bottlenecks limit titers of desired products,and more critically some industrial strains carry the risk of mycotoxin contamination,posing a serious threat to food safety.Conventional strain-improvement methods are time-consuming and low-precision,making them difficult to meet these challenges.Gene-editing technologies,especially the CRISPR-Cas toolbox,now provide powerful,rational,and precise solutions for tailoring filamentous fungi.This review summarizes recent advances in gene-editing tools for filamentous fungi,illustrates how these tools are being deployed to enhance secretion efficiency of food-processing enzymes,and highlights their revolutionary role in safeguarding food safety.