Horticultural Crop Secondary Metabolism
A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant-Crop Biology and Biochemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 April 2024) | Viewed by 5086
Special Issue Editors
Interests: carotenoids; secondary metabolites; genomics; genetic improvement; breeding
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Plants produce thousands of low-molecular-weight organic compounds for every aspect of their life. Among those, secondary metabolites are products not directly involved in the development, normal growth, and reproduction of the producing plants, but are essential for their interactions with the surrounding environment. Responding to biotic or abiotic stimuli, working as pollinator attractants or biological defences, either widespread or species-/ tissue-specific, those compounds exert their role in many different ambits and have multiple functions. Since ancient times, humans have used them as agrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, food additives and aromatics.
Different classes of secondary metabolites exist according to their structures, and such chemical diversity corresponds to different biological roles. Plants reserve energy and exhibit finely tuned biosynthetic and regulative pathways for their synthesis. The characterization of such compounds and the elucidation of their biosynthetic pathways and related regulation networks would be of key importance to manipulate and drive the production and the accumulation of such metabolites using genetic engineering as well as more conventional breeding approaches to produce biofortified crops, as well as boosting plant molecular farming strategies.
This Special Issue of Agronomy therefore welcomes original research articles as well as reviews focusing on the characterization of secondary metabolites, their ecological roles including the interactions of the plants with the environment and their regulation, as well as strategies for bioaccumulation.
Dr. Marco Pietrella
Dr. Alessandro Nicolia
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- secondary metabolites
- bioactive compounds
- natural products
- isoprenoids
- alkaloids
- flavonoids
- poliketides
- phenylpropanoids
- biofortification
- metabolism
- abiotic and biotic stress
- transcription factors
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