Using genetic and genomic resources efficiently and appropriately is critical to advance our understanding of biology and advance crop improvement. We review the myriad genomic resources available and currently in development for the sorghum community.

As the drive to understand how organisms adapt in the field has advanced, researchers have explored numerous avenues of investigation. In such, a growing area of research – broadly termed evolutionary and ecological functional genomics (EEFG) – has developed. It has revolutionized how we investigate plant adaptation and evolution. Here we highlight the methods used, salient findings and progress in adopting EEFG-type studies.

The pace of trait discovery in tomato has considerably accelerated in recent years thanks to advances in deep sequencing and other ’omics technologies. Here we review the genetic resources and current powerful forward genetic strategies, allowing discovery of QTLs, genes and mutations underlying remarkable traits in tomato. We also show how CRISPR/Cas9 GE now provides unprecedented opportunities for candidate gene validation, creation of new genetic diversity and breeding of improved tomato varieties.

In this review, we highlight some recent progress in the dissection of metabolic diversity, with an emphasis on metabolic genome-wide association study (mGWAS) and mGWAS-based multi-dimensional analysis.

This paper describes current plant metabolic studies driven by implementation of multi-omics data and the key biosynthetic procedures that lead to the great diversity of plant triterpenoids.

The importance of cell wall pectin in influencing plant growth and developmental processes, defenses against microbes and saccharification efficiency of plant biomass is thoroughly discussed in this review. Sensing the cell wall is crucial in many developmental and immunity responses and may occur through the perception of released damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) from pectin and other cell wall components.

The advances of high-throughput technologies have allowed the use of Arabidopsis hybrids not only to investigate the genetic mechanisms but also to obtain evolutionary insights on the maintenance of incompatibility alleles in nature. In this review we highlight the current knowledge of the diversity of genetic and evolutionary mechanisms known to contribute to hybrid incompatibility in Arabidopsis genus.