CBGG

The increasing demand for food, feed, fuel, and fiber in modern society calls for urgent crop improvement, especially when faced with challenges such as climate change and decreasing arable land. Therefore, there is a constant need for advances in plant breeding. Over the last two decades, high-throughput techniques, such as next-generation sequencing, have given momentum to multiple omics technologies, including genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, generating an immense amount of data daily. These technologies and advanced bioinformatic tools enhance our understanding of agronomically important traits, including yield, nutrient content, and tolerance to biotic/abiotic stresses. For example, research on nucleotide-binding leucine-rich-repeat (NLR) genes, key players in plant immunity, is driven by high-throughput gene discovery, functional annotation, and synthetic design, accelerating disease resistance breeding. Additionally, high-throughput techniques facilitate the generation of valuable tools like molecular markers, which can be utilized in applications such as marker-assisted selection, quantitative trait locus mapping, genome-wide association study, and genomic selection. As regulations on genetically engineered crops move from process-based approaches toward product-based approaches, omics technologies are expected to play a pivotal role in regulating new crop varieties by assessing substantial equivalence. Embracing the omics era in plant breeding requires a paradigm shift in every aspect of the field, and readiness is essential.

omics; genomics; transcriptomics; proteomics; metabolomics; plant breeding; NLR; process-based regulation; product-based regulation; substantial equivalence