Multi-Omics Pipeline and Omics-Integration Approach to Decipher Plant’s Abiotic Stress Tolerance Responses

Abstract

The present day’s ongoing global warming and climate change adversely affect plants through imposing environmental (abiotic) stresses and disease pressure. The major abiotic factors such as drought, heat, cold, salinity, etc., hamper a plant’s innate growth and development, resulting in reduced yield and quality, with the possibility of undesired traits. In the 21st century, the advent of high-throughput sequencing tools, state-of-the-art biotechnological techniques and bioinformatic analyzing pipelines led to the easy characterization of plant traits for abiotic stress response and tolerance mechanisms by applying the ‘omics’ toolbox. Panomics pipeline including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenomics, proteogenomics, interactomics, ionomics, phenomics, etc., have become very handy nowadays. This is important to produce climate-smart future crops with a proper understanding of the molecular mechanisms of abiotic stress responses by the plant’s genes, transcripts, proteins, epigenome, cellular metabolic circuits and resultant phenotype. Instead of mono-omics, two or more (hence ‘multi-omics’) integrated-omics approaches can decipher the plant’s abiotic stress tolerance response very well. Multi-omics-characterized plants can be used as potent genetic resources to incorporate into the future breeding program. For the practical utility of crop improvement, multi-omics approaches for particular abiotic stress tolerance can be combined with genome-assisted breeding (GAB) by being pyramided with improved crop yield, food quality and associated agronomic traits and can open a new era of omics-assisted breeding. Thus, multi-omics pipelines together are able to decipher molecular processes, biomarkers, targets for genetic engineering, regulatory networks and precision agriculture solutions for a crop’s variable abiotic stress tolerance to ensure food security under changing environmental circumstances.