Advances in Crop Biomass Production based on Multi-omics Approach

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Background

With the development of human society and the increasing demand for food and energy, natural and agricultural ecosystems are under unprecedented pressure. Biomass, the organic material of plants obtained through photosynthesis, is an important resource to meet our food and energy needs. In the last two decades, the use of biomass as an energy source and industrial material has gained interest and become popular due to three important factors: technological developments related to biomass conversion, food surpluses in major developed countries, and climate change and greenhouse gas emissions. Biomass contains varying amounts of carbohydrates (mainly polysaccharides), and the chemical composition and properties in turn primarily determine the use and value of a particular type of biomass. Recently, the study of herbaceous biomass and bioenergy crops, mostly involving C4 photosynthesis, has progressed rapidly thanks to the development of genomic technologies. While the enormous diversity between and within biomass and bioenergy crops provides invaluable resources for biomass utilization, the mechanistic understanding of biomass production is still limited due to several constraints, such as the lack of molecular and omic resources and difficulties in genetic transformation.

The blossoming of omics technologies, from transcriptomics and proteomics to metabolomics and phenomics, as well as their increasing accessibility and decreasing costs, have enabled the application of omics technologies in crop research, improving our understanding of crops in unprecedented ways. Recent breakthroughs in the genomics of various biomass and bioenergy crops such as sorghum, sugarcane, miscanthus, and switchgrass have laid the groundwork for a mechanistic understanding of biomass production. Despite the broad application of omics techniques, especially RNA-seq, we emphasize that the integration of multiple omics techniques, including genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and phenomics, is of great importance to gain new insights in plant research. The synergistic integration of multiple omic technologies as well as genomic population datasets enables more comprehensive studies and provides approaches to circumvent the limitations in plant studies. The goal of this Research Topic is to demonstrate the power of multi-omics in understanding biomass production and the composition of herbaceous biomass plants.

This Research Topic aims to provide new insights into biological issues related to biomass production and composition using herbaceous biomass and bioenergy crops as research models, integrating multi-omics as an approach. We welcome submissions of various types of manuscripts, including but not limited to research on the following sub-themes:
1.Studies to gain insights into key biological questions related to biomass production and variation in biomass composition using multi-omics approaches;
2.Studies to decipher causal genes and genetic structures of biomass-related traits or specific biomass compositions and metabolites using multi-omics approaches;
3.Studies to uncover the divergence and conservation of the genome, epigenome and gene regulation of biomass crops in the context of biomass production.

We welcome hypothesis-driven submissions. Please note that descriptive studies without significant biological advances or those that relate only to model species will not be considered. We require that the research use at least two types of omic technologies. High biomass grasses, including sorghum, maize, sugarcane, miscanthus, and switchgrass, are the preferred species for this Research Topic, while other multi-omic driven research focusing on biomass production in major crops (e.g., wheat and rice) may be considered. Woody plants with biomass and bioenergy use fall outside the scope of this Research Topic.

Keywords: Biomass and Bioenergy Crops, Genomics, Multi-omics, Biomass production, Bioinformatics

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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