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Biology and Biotechnology of Environmental Stress Tolerance in Plants, Volume 3

tools such as genomics and transcriptomics have further enabled the dissec­

tion of genetic and phenotypic changes occurring in plants on being exposed

to unfavorable environmental conditions. In this chapter, we try to decipher

the major role played by metabolomics tools for crop improvement. Here,

we describe the workflow of plant metabolomics research, focusing on the

elucidation of biotic and abiotic stress tolerance mechanisms in plants along

with its potential future role in plant sciences.

14.1 INTRODUCTION

Metabolomics is one of the upcoming and most fascinating tools of omics

techniques that have extensively contributed towards the development of

crops which resulted in higher survival ability of plants on being exposed to

unfavorable environmental conditions. Metabolomics helps us to decipher the

total metabolite pool of any plant, which is further measured to characterize

the genetic changes occurring in plants in response to abiotic or biotic stresses

and metabolic assisted breeding. Till date, around 2,00,000 metabolites have

been identified in plants and a wide variety of metabolites is still unknown

(Razzaq et al., 2019). All the identified metabolites vary in their structure

and function and play a critical role in plant biology. Metabolome profile of

an organism refers to all the low weight metabolites. According to Deborde

et al. (2017), metabolomics study is mostly linked with identifications and

quantifications of small molecules and their functions and interactions

with other metabolites in an organism. Most of the metabolites identified

in plants are associated with their growth and development, crop yield and

tolerance capability against stressed environment (Han & Micallef, 2016).

Ecological metabolomics is one of the major branches of metabolomics that

help us to understand the interconnection between plant biochemical and

various spatial and temporal systems. Ecological metabolome study helps

to identify any change in the metabolites level or new metabolites formed in

plants in response to abiotic/biotic stresses. Additionally, it also explains the

biochemical changes that occur in plants in response to biotic stresses such as

infection, attack of parasite or disease occurrence. According to Garcia-Cela

et al. (2018), study of variations in the concentration of several metabolites

can help to decipher the mechanistic network that eventually explains the

physiological, biochemical, and phenotypic changes occurring in plants in

response to environmental fluctuations.