Reyazul Rouf Mir

Oilseed crops, such as soybean, groundnut, mustard, sunflower, and sesame, are important in global agriculture due to human consumption and industrial applications. Considering their importance in global agriculture, there has been significant attention given to improving both seed oil content and quality. Oil synthesis and accumulation are regulated by complex biochemical pathways and are typically classified as quantitative traits. Over the past few decades, the elucidation of regulatory pathways governing fatty acid synthesis, identification of target genes and advancements in metabolic engineering have made significant progress. Additionally, advancements in sequencing technologies and revolutionized bioinformatics have helped in a significant transformation in the field of genomic analysis. This transformation involves a shift from analyzing individual cultivars to encompassing studies of entire species at the genomic level. This paradigm shift is aimed at comprehensively capturing the full spectrum of diversity. This chapter explores the complexities of traits linked to oil content and recent advancements in mapping these traits to gain a deeper understanding of their complexity. Additionally, the concepts of the pan-genome and super pan-genome, along with the methods employed for their construction are discussed. We also discuss the current challenges faced in major oilseed crops and consider the future prospects for this ever-evolving field.

Plant genetics and genomics have revolutionized agricultural research, and a vast amount of genomics resources have been developed in crop plants. However, these genomics resources could not be utilized with their full potential in genetic improvement of crop plants especially for the improvement of complex quantitative traits related to biotic and abiotic stresses and the outcome is still far from satisfactory. Among several reasons, the lack of availability of precise and high-throughput phenotyping tools are cited as the major one, as poor phenotyping has led to poor results in gene/QTL discovery for genomics-assisted breeding applications. During the recent past, high-throughput precise phenotyping tools and techniques have been developed, which led to development of a number of phenomics platforms. These phenomics platforms can help us to collect high-quality accurate phenotyping data necessary for harnessing the potentiality of genomics resources through genetic dissection of complex quantitative traits including discovery of new gene/QTL, identification of gene function, and genomics selection. This chapter focuses on recent developments in the area of phenomics and provides an overview on the practical use of genomics through crop phenomics.