System-level understanding of plant mineral nutrition in the big data era

Plants convert mineral elements from the soil into organic molecules, thereby serving as a major entry point of these elements into the food web and ultimately impacting human nutrition. Therefore, it is important to understand how plants regulate the homeostasis of these elements and how multiple mineral nutrient signals are wired to influence plant growth. The emergence of big data and methods for their analyses open new avenues for answering these questions. Here, we review the current understanding of how plants respond to single and multiple mineral nutrient limitations. We further highlight the importance of integrating omics data to gain new insights on mineral nutrition as an integrated system, which is required for devising future strategies to improve crop yield.