REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Metabolism and Chemodiversity
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1569014
This article is part of the Research TopicLeveraging Plant Metabolites for Improved Crop Sustainability Under Environmental StressView all 3 articles
Production of secondary metabolites under challenging environments: Understanding functions and mechanisms of signalling molecules
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Botany, Faculty of Life Sciences, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
- 2Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
- 32Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, Starkville, MS-39762, USA, Starkville, Mississippi, United States
- 4Department of Agronomy, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS-66506, USA, Manhattan, United States
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Plants are sessile organisms confronted by various abiotic stresses, including drought, salinity, heavy metals (HMs), and high/low temperatures throughout their growth cycles. In response to stress conditions, plants activate a cascade of metabolites and signalling molecules and networks. These intricate networks of signalling molecules like nitric oxide (NO), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), methyl jasmonate (MeJA), hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), ethylene (ETH), melatonin (MT), and calcium (Ca 2+ ), play a crucial role in enhancing the production of secondary metabolites (SMs) in plants. In plants, SMs are characterized by four diverse groups' terpenes, phenolics, alkaloids, and glucosinolates. Various environmental factors and plant developmental stages influence the production of SMs. The production and regulation of terpenes, phenolics, alkaloids, and glucosinolates in response to signalling molecules under stressed conditions provide valuable insights into stress tolerance. These insights are crucial for developing agricultural practices that improve crop resilience. They are essential for plants to cope with oxidative stress by providing defense mechanisms for improved adaptation, tolerance, and resilience strategies. Conversely, the crosstalk among the signalling molecules paves the way for new research avenues of plant stress management. This review emphasizes the essential role of SMs in plants and how the signalling molecules regulate their production under stress conditions. It also provides valuable insights into the mechanisms that facilitate plant adaptation and stress resilience.
Keywords: abiotic stress, Antioxidants, Cross-talk, secondary metabolites, Signalling molecules, Metabolic Regulation
Received: 03 Feb 2025; Accepted: 30 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Sana, Aftab, NAEEM, Jha and Prasad. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: M. NAEEM, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
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