NMR-based plant metabolomics: where do we stand, where do we go?

NMR-based metabolomics is an important tool for studying biological systems and has been applied in various organisms, including animals, plants and microbes. NMR is able to provide a ‘holistic view’ of the metabolites under certain conditions, and thus is advantageous for metabolomic studies. To maximize the use of the information obtained, it is also important to create a platform to measure, store and share data. Public databases for storing and sharing information are still lacking for NMR-based metabolomic analysis in plants. Such databases are urgently needed to make metabolic profiling a real omics technology. In addition, to understand metabolic processes in depth, single-cell analysis and the turnover of metabolites in pathways (fluxomics) should be measured.