Agrometallomics, as an independent
interdiscipline, is first defined
and described in this review. Metallic elements widely exist in agricultural
plants, animals and edible fungi, seed, fertilizer, pesticide, feedstuff,
as well as the agricultural environment and ecology, and even functional
and pathogenic microorganisms. So, the agrometallome plays a vital
role in molecular and organismic mechanisms like environmetallomics,
metabolomics, proteomics, lipidomics, glycomics, immunomics, genomics,
etc. To further reveal the inner and mutual mechanism of the agrometallome,
comprehensive and systematic methodologies for the analysis of beneficial
and toxic metals are indispensable to investigate elemental existence,
concentration, distribution, speciation, and forms in agricultural
lives and media. Based on agrometallomics, this review summarizes
and discusses the advanced technical progress and future perspectives
of metallic analytical approaches, which are categorized into ultrasensitive
and high-throughput analysis, elemental speciation and state analysis,
and spatial- and microanalysis. Furthermore, the progress of agrometallomic
innovativeness greatly depends on the innovative development of modern
metallic analysis approaches including, but not limited to, high sensitivity,
elemental coverage, and anti-interference; high-resolution isotopic
analysis; solid sampling and nondestructive analysis; metal chemical
species and metal forms, associated molecular clusters, and macromolecular
complexes analysis; and metal-related particles or metal within the
microsize and even single cell or subcellular analysis.