Multi-Omics Techniques in Genetic Studies and Breeding of Forest Plants

In recent years, the ecological and economic values of forest plants have been gradually recognized worldwide. However, the growing global demand for new forest plant varieties with higher wood production capacity and better stress tolerance cannot be satisfied by conventional phenotype-based breeding, marker-assisted selection, and genomic selection. In the recent past, diverse omics technologies, including genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, have been developed rapidly, providing powerful tools for the precision genetic breeding of forest plants. Genomics lays a solid foundation for understanding complex biological regulatory networks, while other omics technologies provide different perspectives at different levels. Multi-omics integration combines the different omics technologies, becoming a powerful tool for genome-wide functional element identification in forest plant breeding. This review summarizes the recent progress of omics technologies and their applications in the genetic studies on forest plants. It will provide forest plant breeders with an elementary knowledge of multi-omics techniques for future breeding programs.