Field-omics—understanding large-scale molecular data from field crops

The recent advances in gene expression analysis as well as protein and metabolite quantification enable genome-scale capturing of complex biological processes at the molecular level in crop field trials. This opens up new possibilities for understanding the molecular and environmental complexity of field-based systems and thus shedding light on the black box between genotype and environment, which in agriculture always is influenced by a multi-stress environment and includes management interventions. Nevertheless, combining different types of data obtained from the field and making biological sense out of large datasets remain challenging. Here we highlight the need to create a cross-disciplinary platform for innovative experimental design, sampling and subsequent analysis of large-scale molecular data obtained in field trials. For these reasons we put forward the term field-omics: "Field-omics strives to couple information from genomes, transcriptomes, proteomes, metabolomes and metagenomes to the long-established practice in crop science of conducting field trials as well as to adapt current strategies for recording and analysing field data to facilitate integration with '-omics' data."