Nayak Spurthi N, Aravind B, Malavalli Sachin S, Sukanth B S, Poornima R, Bharati Pushpa, Hefferon Kathleen, Kole Chittaranjan, Puppala Naveen
Department of Biotechnology, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, India.
Department of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad, India.
Front Genet. 2021 Nov 8;12:742095. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2021.742095. eCollection 2021.
Functional foods are natural products of plants that have health benefits beyond necessary nutrition. Functional foods are abundant in fruits, vegetables, spices, beverages and some are found in cereals, millets, pulses and oilseeds. Efforts to identify functional foods in our diet and their beneficial aspects are limited to few crops. Advances in sequencing and availability of different omics technologies have given opportunity to utilize these tools to enhance the functional components of the foods, thus ensuring the nutritional security. Integrated omics approaches including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics coupled with artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches can be used to improve the crops. This review provides insights into omics studies that are carried out to find the active components and crop improvement by enhancing the functional compounds in different plants including cereals, millets, pulses, oilseeds, fruits, vegetables, spices, beverages and medicinal plants. There is a need to characterize functional foods that are being used in traditional medicines, as well as utilization of this knowledge to improve the staple foods in order to tackle malnutrition and hunger more effectively.
功能性食品是具有超出必要营养之外的健康益处的植物天然产物。功能性食品在水果、蔬菜、香料、饮料中大量存在，在谷物、小米、豆类和油籽中也有一些。识别我们饮食中的功能性食品及其有益方面的努力仅限于少数几种作物。测序技术的进步以及不同组学技术的可用性，为利用这些工具增强食品的功能成分提供了机会，从而确保营养安全。包括基因组学、转录组学、蛋白质组学、代谢组学在内的综合组学方法，再结合人工智能和机器学习方法，可用于改良作物。本综述深入探讨了为寻找活性成分以及通过增强不同植物（包括谷物、小米、豆类、油籽、水果、蔬菜、香料、饮料和药用植物）中的功能化合物来改良作物而开展的组学研究。有必要对传统医学中使用的功能性食品进行特征描述，并利用这些知识来改良主食，以便更有效地应对营养不良和饥饿问题。
