Multi-Omics Integration Drives Precision Breeding in Sorghum: Molecular Dissection and Breeding Practice

Sorghum (Sorghum bicolor L.), the fifth-most important cereal crop globally, serves as a cornerstone crop for food security, forage production, and bioenergy feedstock on arid and semi-arid marginal lands, owing to its high water use efficiency derived from C4 photosynthesis and exceptional tolerance to abiotic stresses. Conventional sorghum breeding has long been constrained by insufficient genetic dissection of complex traits, the “black box” of genotype-to-phenotype mapping, and poorly understood genotype-by-environment interactions, resulting in stagnant genetic gain. In recent years, rapid advances in multi-omics technologies—including genomics, transcriptomics, epigenomics, single-cell omics, and microbiomics—have propelled sorghum research from single-gene mapping to systems-level dissection of regulatory networks, providing a novel paradigm for elucidating the molecular basis of agronomic traits across all molecular layers and breaking through the bottlenecks of conventional breeding. This review systematically synthesizes recent advances in sorghum multi-omics research, dissecting the molecular basis of key agronomic traits across distinct omics layers. We summarize the integrated multi-omics precision breeding technology system and elaborate on the practical applications of multi-omics approaches for four core breeding objectives: stress tolerance, yield, quality, and nutrient use efficiency. Finally, we discuss current challenges and future perspectives, aiming to provide a theoretical framework and technical reference for molecular design breeding in sorghum.