Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Field Crops: Integration of Omics Approaches

Abstract

The development, growth, and productivity of field crops are negatively influenced by abiotic stresses resulting in significant losses in crop yield. Therefore, understanding tolerance of agronomic crops to abiotic stress factors like drought, salinity, heat, and chilling is of paramount importance for plant scientists for effective management. However, due to the complexity of abiotic stress response and tolerance, initial efforts through gene-based approaches were not enough to understand whole level mechanisms. Recently, tremendous developments made in the field of omics (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and phenomics) have opened new avenues to understand and investigate the complex mechanisms of abiotic stress tolerance in plants, although integration of data collected from omics studies with such traits is still a challenging one. This chapter will emphasize the significance of omics field in understanding crop responses to different abiotic stresses, focusing on the recent developments made in field of omics with future prospects to overcome the major drawbacks of omic approaches.