Current and emerging applications of metabolomics in the field of agricultural biotechnology

Metabolomics is a rapidly emerging multidisciplinary field that combines analytical biochemistry for the identification and quantification of metabolites in biological systems in a high-throughput manner, with the application of sophisticated bioinformatics tools for data extraction, analysis, and statistics to support biological interpretation. In today’s biological sciences, the utilization of ‘omics’-type analyses of biological molecules including genes (genomics), transcripts (transcriptomics), proteins (proteomics) and metabolites (metabolomics) are essential for the comprehensive investigation of a particular biological problem. These approaches enhance our understanding of the biology of an organism and its response to environmental stimuli or genetic perturbation. In this chapter we review current and emerging applications of metabolomics in the agriculture industry, food production, security, nutrition and wine production, including a discussion on the use of metabolomics to assess genetically modified organisms.