**5. Concluding remarks and outlook**

The era of the omics has largely contributed to our current understanding of various biological and physiological processes in wheat in a faster way through the provision of high-throughput data that have made a provision for researchers to understand and manipulate some complex traits in wheat. The high-throughput data generated from different omics technologies could expedite efforts aimed at improving our current understanding of other complex traits that have not been fully characterized and also allow researchers to easily manipulate complex traits to suit current and future research needs. However, this will depend on whether the output data from a specific omics technology will be in a format that could be linked with that of the other omics technology output data for combined analysis.

Furthermore, there is little or no research on integrating selected omics technologies in order to obtain a holistic overview of physical and biological processes to improve the bioavailability and stability of selected nutritional components, thereby improving nutritional quality in wheat. Nonetheless, there have been some attempts to integrate omics data in other fields of biology with some challenges experienced in trying to integrate omics data. Difficulties that could arise in integrating omics data could mainly arise from the fact that research in these areas is still at elementary stage and research objectives, and outputs from different research programmes were not outlined in such a way that the data could be linked or integrated. Thus, the research outputs should produce data that can be easily used for combined analysis of omics data for a holistic overview of the entire system.

Several research applications involving the use of molecular techniques, analytical techniques and biochemical techniques have been applied in attempt to improve nutritional quality in wheat to establish a platform that has allowed the application of biofortification of wheat with improved grain Zn. However, this only made it possible to improve the total grain Zn, mainly for wholemeal flour and not across specific wheat grain compartments; wherein the wheat endosperm would have been an ideal region that could have been targeted to enhance the concentration of Zn.

One major challenge is that research is mainly conducted independently across the world, and this makes it a major challenge on the turnover in which data are obtained. This leaves a gap in other areas of research in that some research aspects of the same research focus are left uncovered, making it a challenge to obtain a holistic view of the data generated. Thus, should researchers form consolidated consortiums aimed at addressing similar challenges, it would be easier to integrate the data generated in order to allow researchers to obtain a holistic overview of data generated to allow targeted manipulations of the system in a more controllable or desirable manner.

The era of genome editing has also received more attention, wherein recent advances in genome engineering and editing have made provision of a platform that allows scientists to predict and modify an organism's genetic code with more precision. Furthermore, metabolomics, phenomics, genomics and transcriptomics-based approaches may be integrated to address the major challenge in improving nutritional quality, which entails the characterization of the quantity and origin of the nutrient source that gets accumulated in different grain compartments in different levels.
