From Gene Discovery to Climate-resilient Crops: Omics in Crop Improvement

Climate change and population growth have led to a global need for improved crop plants that are resistant/tolerant to climate-induced stresses and provide greater yields. This book comprehensively and coherently reviews the various aspects of "omics" research methods as they apply to crop plant improvement, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epiomics, ionomics, and interomics. These multiple-omics approaches to crop science have already played an important role in the rapid creation of improved crop plants particularly in rice, wheat, maize, and millets and are set to provide greater advances in the future. The book also describes the various bioinformatics techniques that are utilized as tools for the analysis of omics data. Integrating systems biology with multi-omics datasets that can enhance our understanding of molecular regulatory networks for crop improvement is also covered. This book is essential reading for researchers and graduate students of plant breeding, crop science, molecular biology, and agricultural science.