Metabolomics as a Tool in Agriculture

Abstract

Metabolomics is a study through can be obtain a beter understanding of the complexity of the biological systems, through the chemical composition and relations with the physiology of the plant. The literature describes a lot of information on this support in areas of medicinal plants, chemosystematics, adulteration of plants, etc., but it is scarce in agriculture. At present, agriculture plays a crucial role in human beings. The demand of foods has increased due to the continuous increase in the population, and this requires an increase in the production of crops, besides the crops being afected by the climatic change, atack of pest and diseases and resistance to a conventional agrochemicals. At present, scientists are doing some practices or studies of genetic improvement of crops to increase their production and avoid the problems pointed out. It is an important part of the genomic studies; the results could be the basis for a genetic improvement based on the chemical composition of the crops, and in the metabolomics studies represent a crucial role in their quality for human consumption. The aim of the chapter is to review the literature from 10 years behind emphasizing the importance of metabolomics in crops of economic and feed value.

Metabolomics-Driven Mining of Metabolite Resources: Applications and Prospects for Improving Vegetable Crops

“…Metabolomic studies on the developmental stages (vegetative, flowering or fruiting) of plants, organs (tissue-dependent growth) or fruits (unripened or have registered marked metabolic shifts linked with varieties, agronomic factors and growth conditions [ 85 , 86 ] ( Table 1 ). The primary metabolite profiling of tomato fruits by combined GC- and LC-MS platforms identified 70 compounds including organic acids, sugars, sugar alcohols, phosphorylated and lipophilic compounds and amino acids [ 87 ].…”

Omics for the Improvement of Abiotic, Biotic, and Agronomic Traits in Major Cereal Crops: Applications, Challenges, and Prospects

“…The workflow for metabolomics involves a series of steps, including experimental design, sample preparation and extraction, metabolite detection using analytical techniques, and data processing and analysis using bioinformatics techniques. Since metabolomics involves a wide range of diverse compounds, variations in metabolite concentration (~106) can complicate the downstream analyses [159]. Thus, it is essential to carefully choose (1) the appropriate experimental design, (2) optimized sample preparation and extraction protocols, and (3) detection technologies for comprehensive metabolomic analyses.…”

“…Numerous extraction protocols for metabolomics analysis [160,161] are available, and optimizing the metabolomic protocol is an essential step in metabolomics [159]. For example, targeted metabolomics can be optimized to increase the signal-to-noise (s/n) ratio of the desired metabolite or decrease the time and cost of experimentation [155].…”

Flavonoids in Agriculture

“…The literature describes a lot of information on metabolomics in areas of medicinal plants, chemosystematics, adulteration of plants, and so on, but it is scarce in agriculture [31]. Flavonoids are a diverse group in agricultural crops, and there are studies using metabolomic tools to analyze the content of flavonoids using different analytical techniques ( Table 1).…”