Omics Approaches for Engineering Wheat Production under Abiotic Stresses

Abstract

Abiotic stresses greatly influenced wheat productivity executed by environmental factors such as drought, salt, water submergence, and heavy metals. The effective management at molecular level is mandatory for thorough understanding of plant response to abiotic stress. The molecular mechanism of stress tolerance is complex and requires information at the omic level to understand it effectively. In this regard, enormous progress has been made in the omics field in the areas of genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics. The emerging field of ionomics is also being employed for investigating abiotic stress tolerance in wheat. Omic approaches generate a huge amount of data, and adequate advancements in computational tools have been achieved for effective analysis. However, the integration of omic-scale information to address complex genetics and physiological questions is still a challenge. In this review, we have described advances in omic tools in the view of conventional and modern approaches being used to dissect abiotic stress tolerance in wheat. Emphasis was given to approaches such as quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping, genome-wide association studies (GWAS), and genomic selection (GS). Comparative genomics and candidate gene approaches are also discussed considering identification of potential genomic loci, genes, and biochemical pathways involved in stress tolerance mechanism in wheat. This review also provides a comprehensive catalog of available online omic resources for wheat and its effective utilization. We have also addressed the significance of phenomics in the integrated approaches and recognized high-throughput multi-dimensional phenotyping as a major limiting factor for the improvement of abiotic stress tolerance in wheat.

The thermal tolerance of photosynthetic tissues: a global systematic review and agenda for future research

“…transcriptomics, metabolomics, phenomics) have been applied in thermal tolerance research. These approaches have revealed regulatory mechanisms, new gene variants and their expression and function, and have been instrumental in adaptive plant breeding for resistance to abiotic stressors (Jha et al, 2014(Jha et al, , 2017Shah et al, 2018). For example, identifying molecular mechanisms underlying heat stress responses in silico has led to the refinement of transgenic techniques to engineer the overexpression of HSPs and genes related to ROS activity and membrane stability to confer increased heat tolerance in various crop species (Grover et al, 2013).…”

Integrated bioinformatics analysis reveals the response of Arabidopsis roots to salt stress through multiple gene expression omnibus datasets

“…Salt stress limits plant growth and decreases crop output on the earth. Many works have been done to improve the salttolerance of plants (Shah et al 2018). Although several plants have been used as materials, Arabidopsis is the most ideal model to demonstrate the salt-response mechanisms (Zhang et al 2018).…”

Investigation on salt-response mechanisms inArabidopsis thalianafrom UniProt protein knowledgebase

“…Salt stress is a nonnegligible issue that significantly limits plant growth on the earth. Many scientists have paid great attention to investigate the mechanisms of plant salt-tolerance and salt-adaption using genomic and proteomic technologies (Shah et al 2018;Wu et al 2016). Arabidopsis thaliana is an ideal material to investigate the salt-responsive molecules (Guan et al 2018;Zhang et al 2018;Huang et al 2018).…”