ABSTRACT
The study of the relationship between mineral elements and plants has attracted interest in the scientific field for many years. With the discovery of elements, it was gradually realized that elements play an important role in the overall physiological process of plants. Consequently, scientists categorized elemental nutrients in micro and macroelement depending upon the quantity required by the plants. The deficiency symptoms of each element were also deciphered. However, it was in the last decade, the relationship with elements, their impact, and effects on plants were streamlined more systematically through the concept of ionomics. Ionomics is defined as the sum total of the entire inorganic component of a living system. The concept was proposed largely to evaluate the effect of elements on the physiological process of plants and thus overlapped with the corresponding domains of genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. Thus ionomics functioned as a bridging concept connecting the domains of genes, proteins, and metabolites. Presently, the concept of ionomics is frequently applied in case of imbalance in nutrients of plants and also for toxicity responses to heavy metals. They are also handy in evaluating the disease conditions. This chapter is an attempt to overview the concept of ionomics. Efforts are made to highlight the elemental nutrition, heavy metal toxicity, and its relationship with ionomics.
