Increased world population, decreased water supply, and climate change all put stresses on the global food supply. An exploration of the challenges and possible solutions to improve yields of the main crops, such as cereals, roots, tubers, and grasses, Omics Technologies and Crop Improvement reviews data on food sciences and omics. The book covers modern omic technologies such as nutrigenomics and metagenomics. It provides a detailed examination of how omics can help crop science and horticulture and introduces the benefits of using these technologies to increase crop yields and other features such as resistance and nutritional values. The book highlights crop improvements such as increased yield, drought resistance, disease resistance, and value-added performance through a non-transgenic format. It explores how the different omics technologies, especially the most recent ones (proteomics, metabolomics, nutrigenomics, ionomics, and metagenomics) would be used to improve the quantitative and qualitative features of crop plants. Topics covered include: Advances in omics for improved fresh crops Transcriptome analyses on the drought response using drought tolerant near isogenic lines Metabolite profiling that reveals different effects of nitrogen amendments on vegetables Omics technology application to forage crops improvement Secondary metabolites and plant tissue culture RNAi technology and crop improvement Gene expression analysis methods with NGS data Web database resources and crops improvement Gene Expression Networks (GEN) in crops Specific crop improvement (papaya, wheat, coffee, potato, and more) With contributions from pioneering researchers from twelve countries, the book presents a broad view of how omics would help crop science and horticulture meet the challenges of a shrinking global food supply for a burgeoning global population.

The book is about the seed development in the model and crop plants. Seed development is a key step of the plant life cycle that determines the nutrient value of seeds – the life for human civilization, growth, and development. The nutrient value of seeds is mainly due to storage reserve products such as carbohydrates, lipids (triacylglycerols), and proteins. The book primarily focuses on application of the 21st century high-throughput technologies transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and systems biology in near complete understanding of the various processes involved in seed development in different crop plants. The book reveals how such technologies have revolutionized our understanding of the multilayer processes and regulations involved therein by generating large-scale datasets. Accumulated datasets provide basic knowledge to develop integrated strategies to eventually improve the nutritional value of plant seed and crop yield, a critical goal in food security issues around the globe.

This edited book brings out a comprehensive collection of information on the modern omics-based research. The main focus of this book is to educate researchers about utility of omics-based technologies in rapid crop improvement. In last two decades, omics technologies have been utilized significantly in the area of plant sciences and has shown promising results. Omics technology has potential to address the challenge of food security in the near future. The comprehensive use of omics technology occurred in last two decades and helped greatly in the understanding of complex biological problems, improve crop productivity and ensure sustainable use of ecosystem services. This book is of interest to researchers and students of life sciences, biotechnology, plant biotechnology, agriculture, forestry, and environmental sciences. It is also a useful knowledge resource for national and international agricultural scientists.

With the advent of new technologies and acquired knowledge, the number of fields in omics and their applications in diverse areas are rapidly increasing in the postgenomics era. Such emerging fields—including pharmacogenomics, toxicogenomics, regulomics, spliceomics, metagenomics, and environomics—present budding solutions to combat global challenges in biomedicine, agriculture, and the environment. OMICS: Applications in Biomedical, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences provides valuable insights into the applications of modern omics technologies to real-world problems in the life sciences. Filling a gap in the literature, it offers a broad, multidisciplinary view of current and emerging applications of omics in a single volume. Written by highly experienced active researchers, each chapter describes a particular area of omics and the associated technologies and applications. Topics covered include: Proteomics, epigenomics, and pharmacogenomics Toxicogenomics and the assessment of environmental pollutants Applications of plant metabolomics Nutrigenomics and its therapeutic applications Microalgal omics and omics approaches in biofuel production Next-generation sequencing and omics technology for transgenic plant analysis Omics approaches in crop improvement Engineering dark-operative chlorophyll synthesis Computational regulomics Omics techniques for the analysis of RNA splicing New fields, including metagenomics, glycomics, and miRNA Breast cancer biomarkers for early detection Environomics strategies for environmental sustainability This timely book explores a wide range of omics application areas in the biomedical, agricultural, and environmental sciences. Throughout, it highlights working solutions as well as open problems and future challenges. Demonstrating the diversity of omics, it introduces readers to state-of-the-art developments and trends in omics-driven research.

Due to the advent of state-of-the-art technologies in the field of biotechnology, much progress has been achieved since the last decade. OMICS technologies are being extensively used to address various issues pertaining to agriculture. Recent advances in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics techniques have revolutionized the understanding of genetic response of plants to various biotic and abiotic stresses. Strategic application of this revolutionary technology will eventually lead towards attaining sustainability in agriculture. This new book, Plant OMICS and Crop Breeding, addresses this important issue.

Genetically engineered (GE) crops were first introduced commercially in the 1990s. After two decades of production, some groups and individuals remain critical of the technology based on their concerns about possible adverse effects on human health, the environment, and ethical considerations. At the same time, others are concerned that the technology is not reaching its potential to improve human health and the environment because of stringent regulations and reduced public funding to develop products offering more benefits to society. While the debate about these and other questions related to the genetic engineering techniques of the first 20 years goes on, emerging genetic-engineering technologies are adding new complexities to the conversation. Genetically Engineered Crops builds on previous related Academies reports published between 1987 and 2010 by undertaking a retrospective examination of the purported positive and adverse effects of GE crops and to anticipate what emerging genetic-engineering technologies hold for the future. This report indicates where there are uncertainties about the economic, agronomic, health, safety, or other impacts of GE crops and food, and makes recommendations to fill gaps in safety assessments, increase regulatory clarity, and improve innovations in and access to GE technology.

Merging topical data from recently published review and research articles, as well as the knowledge and insight of industry experts, Omics Applications in Crop Science delves into plant science, and various technologies that use omics in agriculture. This book concentrates on crop breeding and environmental applications, and examines the applications of various omics technologies including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics to important agronomic, horticultural, medicinal, plantation, fiber, forage, and bioenergy crops. It covers the application of omics technologies in several important crops, including cereal, and pulse. It explores the brassica species, drought tolerance in rice, and genetic engineering of the potato. The book discusses temperate fruits; and omics of medicinal plants, the metabolomics of Catharanthus roseus and how the medicinally important alkaloids of the plant are produced, as well as the omics of another important medicinal plant, Withania somnifera. It examines floriculture, the omics advances in tea, and omics strategies in improving the fiber qualities of cotton. It provides omics-related information on forest trees and forage crops, and offers a detailed account on how omics technologies are applicable in molecular farming, along with associated issues such as commercial aspects of molecular farming, clinical trials of plant-produced pharmaceuticals, regulatory issues and intellectual property rights. Written as a resource for plant biologists, plant breeders, agriculture scientists, researchers and college students studying various fields in agriculture, and the agri industries, OMICS Applications in Crop Science compiles the latest research in this essential field of modern crop and plant science utilizing various omics technologies and their applications in a number of important crops/plants from agronomy, pomology, olericulture, floriculture, medicinal plants, plantation and energy crops, agro-forestry, and more.