Rice, one of the world's staple crops, faces significant challenges due to abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity and extreme temperatures, which threaten global food security. Traditional breeding methods have limitations in developing stress-tolerant rice varieties within a short time frame. Thus, there is a growing interest in employing multi-omics approaches, integrating genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and epigenomics, to unravel the complex molecular mechanisms underlying abiotic stress tolerance in rice. In contrast to a single-omics method, this combination of multi-dimensional approaches provides an extensive understanding of cellular dynamics under abiotic stress conditions. This review discusses recent advances in multi-omics technologies and their applications in dissecting the molecular responses of rice to abiotic stresses. It highlights the integration of multi-omics data to identify critical genes, pathways and regulatory networks involved in stress responses and tolerance mechanisms.
Furthermore, it explores the potential of multi-omics-assisted breeding strategies for developing stress-tolerant rice varieties with improved agronomic traits. The challenges and future perspectives in utilizing multi-omics approaches to enhance rice's abiotic stress tolerance are also discussed. Overall, multi-omics approaches offer a comprehensive platform to understand the molecular basis of stress tolerance in rice and accelerate the development of resilient varieties to ensure global food security.
