Databases: A Weapon from the Arsenal of Bioinformatics for Plant Abiotic Stress Research

Abstract

Plants are an essential part of every food chain on earth. In addition, the humans utterly rely on plants for their every single need including food, shelter, oils, drugs, dyes, flavors, perfumes, etc. Due to the perpetually increasing population, the burden is increasing at an alarming rate. The whole scenario is worsened by changing climatic conditions, overexploitation of natural resources, and deforestation. Due to the combination of all these factors, there is a serious level of pressure which enforces stress on the plants. As a result, abiotic stresses including flooding, drought, heat shock, cold stress, etc. majority hampers crop productivity. Similar to the overall productivity of crops in the post-genomic era, the rates for various types of sequencing, MS analysis, and metabolite profiling have also fallen down. As a result, several genes, proteins, and metabolites which play role in stress tolerance have been identified and annotated. This flow of information with respect to abiotic stress research has resulted in a number of databases for different omics approaches including genomics, proteomics, miRNAomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, etc. These various technologies provide a holistic picture of stress responses and hence provide a way to better strategies for the current situation challenges. In this book chapter, we have highlighted various useful databases available to the crop scientists and breeders.