Vol. 6, Issue 1, Part A (2024)

The accelerating impact of climate change on global agriculture necessitates the rapid development of climate-resilient crops. Functional genomics—a powerful suite of molecular biology tools aimed at understanding gene functions and interactions—offers transformative potential to dissect plant responses to abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, and heat. This paper explores the integration of transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and phenomics with high-throughput gene editing tools such as CRISPR/Cas9, RNAi, and TILLING to identify and manipulate stress-responsive genes. By leveraging next-generation sequencing (NGS), gene expression profiling, and genome-wide association studies (GWAS), researchers have uncovered key regulatory pathways, transcription factors (e.g., DREB, NAC, and WRKY families), and epigenetic modulators involved in stress tolerance. The role of omics platforms and integrative databases such as Plant Reactome and Phytozome is highlighted, along with case studies in rice, wheat, and maize. Comparative performance metrics show improved yield and stress adaptation in genetically modified lines compared to wild types under stress simulation. Despite the promise, challenges such as off-target effects, regulatory bottlenecks, and limited field-level validation remain. This review concludes by identifying future prospects for functional genomics in precision agriculture and sustainable crop improvement.