Food and Nutrition

Food Analysis and Foodomics

Many of the world's major crops, such as rice, wheat, cassava, beans, sweet potatoes, pearl millet or corn, are often deficient in some of these minerals. Traditional agricultural practices can in part increase the amount of healthy plant food, but advances in ‘omics’ technology are being used rapidly in the development of plants with essential improved nutrients. Ionomics, or the study of the ionome (which can be defined as the composition of a particular mineral element), is a modern and effective genomics tool that can provide high-level input information about the broad structure of nutrients provided to a plant. In conjunction with other ‘omics’ technologies, such as genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics can be used to identify many genes that play an important role in the synthesis, transport and accumulation of mineral nutrients in plant foods, especially in their edible components.