Sustainability of Agriculture and Global Food Supply Using Advanced Molecular Tools and Integrated Multi-omics and Gene Functions

Food security has become the biggest challenge today due to the burgeoning population and environmental impacts on crops. The agriculture system needs to meet the food demand by using appropriate sustainable approaches while exerting minimum impact on the ecosystem. Multiomics is one of the successful sustainable technologies that contribute toward crop improvement and acceleration in food production. Progressive development in next-generation sequencing for various omics like genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, ionomics and phenomics have provided desired genetic resources for crop improvement. With the development of molecular technology, new breeding tools are used for the transfer of genes from one species to another. Biotic and abiotic stress-resistant traits are incorporated in cultivating varieties to make them superior and produce a good yield. This chapter solely summarizes the development of new traits with the help of new breeding tools such as TALENs and CRISPR in plant breeding. The high throughput multi-omics techniques are not only applicable for enhancing agricultural growth and yield but also helpful in refining food security.

Keywords: Breeding tools, Cultivation, Multi-omics, Sustainability