Bioinformatics approaches and applications in plant biotechnology

BACKGROUND: In recent years, major advance in molecular biology and genomic technologies have led to an exponential growth in biological information. As the deluge of genomic information, there is a parallel growth in the demands of tools in the storage and management of data, and the development of software for analysis, visualization, modelling, and prediction of large data set. MAIN BODY: Particularly in plant biotechnology, the amount of information has multiplied exponentially with a large number of databases available from many individual plant species. Efficient bioinformatics tools and methodologies are also developed to allow rapid genome sequence and the study of plant genome in the ‘omics’ approach. This review focuses on the various bioinformatic applications in plant biotechnology, and their advantages in improving the outcome in agriculture. The challenges or limitations faced in plant biotechnology in the aspect of bioinformatics approach that explained the low progression in plant genomics than in animal genomics are also reviewed and assessed. CONCLUSION: There is a critical need for effective bioinformatic tools, which are able to provide longer reads with unbiased coverage in order to overcome the complexity of the plant’s genome. The advancement in bioinformatics is not only beneficial to the field of plant biotechnology and agriculture sectors, but will also contribute enormously to the future of humanity.