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

salinity, heat, cold, and heavy metal stress) has been briefly discussed.

Before the discovery of various metabolomics techniques, identification

of specialized molecules formed in plants in response to abiotic stress was

mostly unknown. Metabolomics plays a prominent role in plant biology.

Its diverse role that ranges from quantification of the level of known

metabolites in plants to identification of unknown smaller weight metabo­

lites formed in plants in response to abiotic stress has become a handy

tool for both researchers and plant breeders. However, it is still an early

branch of science and various aspects such as data mining and annotation,

assessment, processing, and evaluation needs proper attention. Integration

of metabolomics data with other omics techniques will proficiently dissect

novel metabolic network for enhancing the stress tolerance capability of

plants.

In the future, by using metabolomics approach, specific markers can be

identified that can eventually be linked with the nature and scale of effects

caused by abiotic stress in plants. Approaches like metabolome assisted

plant breeding might be very useful for the development of climate resil­

ient plants along with higher yield. Another important topic that needs

to be addressed in coming time is higher subcellular compartmentaliza­

tion. Biosynthesis of metabolites takes place in various organelles and

thus more sophisticated tools in sampling highly spatially and temporally

resolved tissues will be necessary to unravel the complexity of interacting

metabolic pathways. Combining the metabolomics with specific isotope

labeling of metabolites can lead to the detection of metabolites in cell

organelles along with their metabolic pathway. Taken together, our under­

standing of metabolite adaptation to abiotic stress in plants is still quite

obscure. It is of utmost importance to further enhance our knowledge

of metabolite adaptation to abiotic stress with targeted comprehensive

metabolomics studies emphasizing primary and secondary metabolic

pathways.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Dr. Aryadeep Roychoudhury is highly thankful for the financial assistance

received from Department of Higher Education, Science and Technology and

Biotechnology, Government of West Bengal and Science and Engineering

Research Board (SERB), Government of India for the grant [264(Sanc.)/

ST/P/S&T/1G-80/2017] and [EMR/2016/004799], respectively.