High-throughput Metabolomics for the Dissection of Plant Biotic and Abiotic Stress Responses

More than 20 years after the term was coined, metabolomics has become one of the most popular omics technologies due to its transversality, and being species independent and relatively easy to implement in different analytical platforms. However, despite the growing interest in this technology and the increasing number of workflows, databases, and applications, a gold standard is still lacking for data processing and annotation. One of the leading fields in the development and implementation of metabolomics is plant science in a number of different areas including plant physiology and biochemistry, plant biotechnology, and plant breeding. This chapter discusses the fundamentals of plant metabolomics, from data acquisition and the different platforms available to processing and annotation of metabolites, emphasizing the important role of metabolomics as a functional evaluation tool as well as in the discovery and validation of selection metabolic markers for crops under constraints imposed by climate change.