Environmental and Biotechnological Regulation of Plant Secondary Metabolites
A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Molecular Biology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 531
Editors
Interests: elicitation; environmental; medicinal plants; secondary metabolism; plants and climate
Interests: plant bioactive compounds; bioactivity; essential oils; phenolic compounds; secondary metabolites; plant tissue culture; extraction; green solvents
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Plant secondary metabolites (SMs) play essential roles in mediating interactions between plants and their environment, contributing to defense, stress tolerance, and ecological communication. These compounds, belonging to diverse classes such as phenolics, terpenoids, and alkaloids, are shaped by complex regulatory networks that respond dynamically to environmental cues. In the context of global climate change, understanding how environmental factors, including UV radiation, temperature extremes, drought, salinity, and nutrient availability, modulate these biosynthetic pathways remains a central challenge in plant science.
At the same time, advances in biotechnology, including metabolic engineering, genome editing, elicitor technologies, and controlled-environment cultivation, are opening new opportunities to enhance or tailor SM production for applications in medicine, agriculture, nutrition, and other industries. Integrating ecological, physiological, molecular, and biotechnological approaches is crucial for uncovering the mechanisms that regulate metabolite accumulation and for developing sustainable strategies to exploit plant-derived compounds.
This Special Issue welcomes original research and review articles that explore environmental regulation, molecular control, evolutionary aspects, and biotechnological manipulation of plant secondary metabolism. Studies employing omics tools, metabolic modeling, bioreactor systems, and sustainable production platforms are particularly encouraged. Through this collection, we aim to provide an interdisciplinary forum that advances our understanding of how plants synthesize, regulate, and adapt their chemical diversity in changing environments.
Dr. Ines Mansinhos
Dr. Sandra Gonçalves
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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-anonymized 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
- secondary metabolites
- phytochemicals
- abiotic stress
- plant–environment interactions
- elicitation
- green extraction
- biosynthetic pathways
- omics approaches
- metabolic engineering
- sustainable production
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