Omics research for crop improvement in spices
In the scenario of increasing global population and changing climatic conditions, breeding approaches in crops need to be integrated with novel technologies for enhancing yield, quality, and resistance to biotic/abiotic stresses. The international trade demands quality clean spices without any pesticide residues. With the advent of next-generation sequencing, whole-genome sequence information and RNA-seq-based transcriptome data are available in major spice crops. Furthermore, proteome profiling and metabolome fingerprinting of spices have been reported to understand major peptides, amino acids, phenolic compounds, fatty acids, and other metabolites linked to quality and stress tolerance. This chapter gives an account of the research in omics for spice crop improvements and the future perspective of spice research in the light of genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics.
