CroPCS: Crop Plants Combined Stress Knowledgebase

Abstract

Plants, being sessile organisms, are continually exposed to diverse combinations of biotic and abiotic stresses in their natural habitats. Combined stresses are considered significant threats to plants, particularly in the context of today's climate change. Despite the vast amount of data generated by OMICS experiments, information remains widely dispersed and inaccessible within the literature. Attempts to collect, integrate, store, and generate such data and information that are easily accessible to the public are the need of the hour. Crop Plants Combined Stress Knowledgebase (CroPCS) is a manually curated repository, created through the biocuration of OMICS literature, storing valuable data on crop plant responses to combined stresses. It offers a user-friendly interface for exploring, querying, and downloading molecular data [genes, proteins, metabolites, and non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs)] under various stress combinations. The literature on all OMICS (transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics) are listed with cross-referenced data. The current version of CroPCS encompasses 13 crop plants and 16 stress combinations, and contains a total of 266,417 molecules, including 262,220 genes, 1709 proteins, 274 metabolites, and 2214 ncRNAs. Additionally, it supports community curation by allowing users to submit their own data. CroPCS stands out as a unique online resource and is available at https://www2.tezu.ernet.in/cropcs.