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

omics techniques like genomics and genome-wide sequencing can open a

new horizon for the development of stress tolerance in plants. Thus, this

chapter describes the advantages of metabolomics in enhancing the survival

capability of plants on being exposed to stressed environment. Initially, we

briefly describe about the advanced tools used in metabolomics research,

followed by the application of metabolomics in plant sciences.

14.2 TOOLS USED IN METABOLOMICS

Choice of any metabolomics approach depends on its accuracy, speed,

precision, selectivity, and sensitivity of analytical tools. Performing the

complete metabolomics study of plants is a challenging task due to the

absence of sufficient information about the connection between proteomics

and metabolomics of plants. Along with this, lack of standard protocol,

technical hurdles and volatile nature of plant metabolites further worsen the

analysis (Zivy et al., 2015). Due to such hurdles, no single technique can

provide the full metabolomics profile of any plant so that the combination

of various techniques likes nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), capillary

electrophoresis mass spectrometry (CE-MS), liquid chromatography-mass

spectrometry (LC-MS), gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GS-MS),

high performance thin layer chromatography (HPTLC), direct infusion mass

spectrometry (DIMS) and Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass

spectrometry (FI-ICR-MS) have been extensively used for metabolomics

analysis. NMR is one of the most common and widely used techniques for

studying the metabolome profile of plants due to its non-destructive, selec­

tive, quick, and convenient nature. It is also very proficient in mapping the

metabolic pathways (Boiteau et al., 2018). Ma et al. (2018) stated that the

metabolic change occurring in plants in response to abiotic/biotic stresses

can be monitored using NMR techniques. Moreover, NMR can also detect

the structural components of any unidentified metabolites. Recent develop­

ment in NMR techniques has enabled the researchers to detection of specific

labels present on the stable isotopes (Deborde et al., 2017). NMR is a rapid,

non-invasive, non-biased, and highly quantitative approach for sample

preparation without using chromatographic separation techniques. It helps to

probe compounds that are associated with insoluble polymers via solid-state

high-resolution NMR (Kim & Choi, 2011). However, lower resolution, poor

sensitivity and lower dynamic range has limited the use of NMR.

Challenges faced during the analysis of metabolites of plants using NMR

techniques can be easily solved by using MS techniques. Mass spectroscopy