Plant Metabolomics: Sustainable Approach Towards Crop Productivity

Abstract

Metabolomics signifies a rapidly growing and interdisciplinary field of science by combination of biochemistry, analytical chemistry, bioinformatics, medicine etc. Metabolomics allows achieving a sophisticated level of information about biological systems and holding great promise for development of novel diagnostic tests and therapies including personalized medicine. Notwithstanding its powerful analytical and computational systems integration still there remains many challenges pertaining to metabolic and analytical challenges. Metabolomics combined with other technologies permits us to resolve key issues of agronomic performance that remained unsettled hitherto. Metabolomics is also developing into a valuable tool that can be used to monitor and assess gene function, and to characterize post-genomic processes from a broad perspective Many efforts can be focused to crop plants that have detailed info on performance in varied environments These challenges are largely caused by the high degree of chemical diversity among metabolite pools as well as the complexity of spatial and temporal distribution within living tissues. In this chapter role of metabolomics for improving various agricultural crops including GMO varieties are discussed in detail besides various networking approaches as well. The role of plant bioactive substances for stimulating the soil microbial communities is also elaborated in concluding section.