Your new experience awaits. Try the new design now and help us make it even better

REVIEW article

Front. Plant Sci.

Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1706600

Elicitor-mediated enhancement of secondary metabolites in plant species: A review

Provisionally accepted
Abdul RazzaqAbdul Razzaq1,2Muhammad Mubashar ZafarMuhammad Mubashar Zafar3Aima AliAima Ali2Lubna IhsanLubna Ihsan2Fariha QadirFariha Qadir2M Nasir KhanM Nasir Khan4Yingying ZhangYingying Zhang1Linmao GaoLinmao Gao1Hanqing CongHanqing Cong1Xuefei JiangXuefei Jiang3Fei QiaoFei Qiao1*
  • 1Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences Haikou Experimental Station, Haikou, China
  • 2The University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan
  • 3Hainan University, Haikou, China
  • 4University of Tabuk, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Select one of your emails

You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:

Notify me on publication

Please enter your email address:

If you already have an account, please login

You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here

Plant metabolites play a vital role in a plant's defense system. Plant metabolites are extensively studied for their therapeutic values. Plant therapeutic values are attributed based on the magnitude of metabolites. Among all the metabolites, secondary metabolites are considered to have more potential. Different medicinal plants like Cephalotaxus contain therapeutically valuable bioactive alkaloids. The pharmaceutical relevance of secondary metabolites has been well recognized, but low accumulation and convoluted biosynthetic mechanism hamper their industrial production. Elicitors, both biotic and abiotic, have emerged as effective strategies to enhance metabolite biosynthesis by triggering plant defense signaling pathways. Chemical agents like salicylic acid, methyl jasmonate, nitric oxide, and heavy metals, along with physical factors such as ultraviolet radiation, salinity, and osmotic stress, significantly increase secondary metabolite production. Similarly, microbial extracts, polysaccharides, and polyamines serve as potent biotic elicitors. Synergistic combinations, particularly sodium fluoride with methyl jasmonate, have shown remarkable success in boosting Cephalotaxus alkaloid yields. Advances in elicitor-mediated interventions, coupled with omics, nanotechnology, and CRISPR-based bioprocessing, promise sustainable and scalable production systems. This review highlights the mechanisms, case studies, challenges, and prospects of elicitor applications, emphasizing their transformative role in bridging traditional medicinal plants with modern pharmaceutical needs.

Keywords: secondary metabolites, elicitors, biosynthesis, Alkaloids, plant metabolites

Received: 19 Sep 2025; Accepted: 09 Oct 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Razzaq, Zafar, Ali, Ihsan, Qadir, Khan, Zhang, Gao, Cong, Jiang and Qiao. 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: Fei Qiao, fei.qiao@catas.cn

Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

Supplementary Material