Nano Omics in Agricultural Sciences - Is It an Interdisciplinary Revolution or Just Another Theoretical Science

Simran Choudhury and Hemanga Kumar Das*
Parul University, Parul Institute of Applied Sciences, Department of Biotechnology, Gujarat, India
*Corresponding author: Hemanga Kumar Das, Parul University, Parul Institute of Applied Sciences, Department of Biotechnology, Gujarat, India.

Published: July 03, 2024

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Abstract  

With the current world population being at 8 billion and still counting, there is an urgent need to tackle the questions in food security, which can be answered by improvements in the various crop species and their sustainable management practices. These improvements can include the production of various stress resistant crops, that cause minimal resource exhaustion. Thus, in order to produce such novel crop strains, approaches such as Nano Omics can be employed. Also, introduction of certain properties and changes in certain metabolic pathways of plants can lead to them being much more suited for sustainable agricultural practices. Omics refers to the holistic approach of studying (quantifying, localizing, characterization) of all the essential components of a biological body, such as, genes, transcripts, proteins, and metabolites. The amalgamation of this knowledge with the emerging field of nanotechnology can bring about revolutionary amendments in the field of crop improvement and crop management, that would lead to better sustainable agricultural practices and food security. Omics technology (specifically, Genomics) has already enabled the development of crops like, drought tolerant maize, Flavr savr tomato, rice with higher grain production, etc. Besides, there has also been the use of engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) in precision agriculture to improve crop quality, nutritional value, pathogen resistance, and most significantly to improve crop resilience against extreme climatic conditions. Additionally, ENMs have been used in various crop management practices and experiments to detect nano-toxicity, or as carriers or active material in nano- enabled pesticides. Hence, employing these approaches would also help in the development of agricultural practices that are both sustainable and resilient to the ever-changing climatic conditions, but what one needs to understand is the abundance of such techniques which often remain unemployed due to lack of feasibility.

Keywords: Engineered nanomaterials; Nanotechnology; Nano-toxicity; Omics; Agriculture

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