Harnessing genomics for conservation and restoration of tropical peat-swamp forests: a review of tools, applications, and strategies

• Genomic applications for monitoring species resilience and adaptation techniques for conservation and restoration. • Advanced genetic technologies for evaluating biodiversity in tropical peat-swamp environments. • Obstacles and potential for using genomics to aid in the rehabilitation of peat swamp forests. Tropical peat-swamp forests have undergone degradation at alarming rate, that restoration is highly prioritized. While restoring much degraded tropical peat-swamp forest, biodiversity conservation, especially forest tree species is always incorporated in the program. Most restoration and conservation programs, however, rarely consider the genetic aspects of the tree species used and being conserved. Amid the limited information on species diversity, knowledge on genetic diversity and adaptation of tropical tree species used in the restoration should be useful in designing both suitable restoration and conservation programs followed by monitoring the long-term process. Studies on the adaptation of plants to certain environment have been much facilitated with the advance of the genomic approach. The genomics approach coupled with bioinformatics enables the identification of genes associated with the adaptive traits as well as the adaptation mechanisms, such as genetic diversity, characterizing population structure, gene flow, interspecific hybridization, and genomic adaptation of the tree species under marginal peat-swamp conditions. While reflecting on some drawbacks of restoration efforts, this review highlights some genomic application studies so far and discuss its possible support to biodiversity conservation and restoration program of tropical peat-swamp forest ecosystem. Despite its limitation we argue that a genomic approach is still valuable in providing information on the tree population restored and fine-tuning the restoration programs of tropical peat-swamp forests.