Emerging Omics for Use in African Fermented Foods

The advent of high-throughput omics technologies, including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, has provided insights into the microbial communities, metabolic functions and biochemical transformations involved in fermentation. Collectively termed foodomics , the application of these techniques in African fermented foods is beginning to unravel the molecular mechanisms underpinning their nutritional and sensory qualities. While prior studies have predominantly focused on nutritional, health-promoting and volatile profiling, recent advances highlight the emerging use of proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics to track dynamic microbial activity, enzymatic processes and metabolite fluxes during fermentation. Integrating these diverse omics platforms (multi-omics) can offer a systems-level understanding of African fermented food ecosystems, informing genotype-phenotype relationships and the development of optimised fermentation processes. This chapter summarises the application of different types of omics techniques in fermented food research based on representative studies in Africa. Overall, evidence in the literature suggests that multi-omics applications hold immense promise for innovation and the sustainable commercialisation of African fermented foods despite infrastructural and data limitations.