Gene pyramiding and omics approaches for stress tolerance in leguminous plants - Legumes Under Environmental Stress: Yield, Improvement and Adaptations - page 277

to the identification of metabolites that help in over-
coming stressed conditions.
Further metabolomic analysis in legumes has been
mostly limited to the model species (Thompson et al.,
2009). This technique therefore provides an insight
into the role of various metabolites that have stress-
tolerance properties. But as metabolic pathways are
complex and interrelated, an extensive metabolic anal-
ysis needs to be done in order to have a complete
understanding of the process and its application in stress
tolerance.

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16.3 Conclusions

Stress, whether biotic or abiotic, causes alterations in
the metabolism of the plant system. The legume family
contains species that are valuable as food as well as
cash crops. Therefore, such stresses can have a serious
impact on the health and productivity of legumes, and
consequently affect the nutrition and economy of the
human population. Hence, the development of resis-
tant legume varieties that can tolerate increasing
stressful conditions in the environment has become the
need of the hour.
Biotechnology is a field that provides various strategies
offering great potential to counter this problem. Gene
pyramiding and MAS are encouraging techniques that
allow plant breeders to overcome numerous fungal and
viral diseases. In addition, the omics approaches offer
researchers many opportunities to develop crop varieties
that can adjust and survive under extreme environ-
mental conditions. Genome sequencing of soybean and
model plants has led to identification of genes involved
in stress responses. A cumulative approach consisting of
all the above mentioned techniques allows deep insights
at genetic and molecular levels to decode the expression
and enhancement of stress responses in plants.

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