Morphological Traits and Their Role in the Phytochemical Profiles of Medicinal Plants
A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2025 | Viewed by 1929
Special Issue Editors
Interests: medicinal plants; plant morpho-anatomy; microscopy; plant extracts; ecological role and biological activity of secondary metabolites; chemotaxonomy; ethnobotany
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: medicinal plants; plant morpho-anatomy; microscopy; plant extracts; ecological role and biological activity of secondary metabolites; chemotaxonomy; ethnobotany
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The aim of this Special Issue is to highlight the most recent results obtained in the morphology and phytochemistry of medicinal plants during the last years, encompassing chemosystematic and taxonomic investigations at species or lower and higher taxonomic levels, as well as ethnobotany-based studies on the biological activity of secondary metabolites.
This Special Issue aims to assemble all these fields of study and to enhance their importance in the discovery of botanical uses in modern industry and research. Therefore, this Special Issue valorises works that simultaneously contemplate multidisciplinary study approaches in which morphological and phytochemical investigations are pivotal within the overall research context. Special emphasis is given to works focused on secretory structures (epidermal or tissue) in relation to the type of productivity in secondary metabolites, with insights into their ecological role or biological activities. We anticipate original and novel works, concerning taxa never investigated before on the morpho-anatomical or ultrastructural descriptions performed by means of light and electron microscopy. Phytochemical characterizations or chemosystematic approaches, such as comparative HPLC-MS, GC-FID, GC-MS, NMR (and others) investigations, are also to be included. The proposal of histochemical investigations is highly encouraged. Comparative studies of secondary metabolites distribution at species level or within lower or higher taxa (e.g., subspecies, genus, or family) are particularly encouraged. Studies including morphometric or anatomical surveys that contribute at the elucidation or clarification of the taxonomy are also welcome, if accompained by in-depth and rigorous literature research on the secondary metabolite profiles. Finally, works that combine the above-mentioned morphological and phytochemical analyses in order to identify adulterations of species or misidentifications are expected.
To this purpose, we are glad to invite you to submit original research articles, reviews, opinion papers, and short communications.
Prof. Dr. Fico Gelsomina
Dr. Claudia Giuliani
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- morpho-anatomy
- microscopy
- phytochemistry
- secondary metabolites
- chemosystematics
- taxonomy
- ethnobotany
- biological activity
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