REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
This article is part of the Research TopicPhysiological, Molecular and Genetic Perspectives of Environmental Stress Response in Plants, Volume IIView all articles
Autophagy-Phytohormone Crosstalk: A Dual-Regulation Axis in Plant Development
Provisionally accepted
- 1Lushan Botanical Garden, Jiangxi Province and Chinese Academy of Sciences, Jiujiang, China
- 2Chinese Academy of Forestry Research Institute of Subtropical Forestry, Fuyang, China
- 3Jiangxi Wuyuan Tea Vocational College, Shangrao, China
- 4Jiangxi Academy of Forestry, Nanchang, China
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Autophagy, a conserved catabolic process that degrades and recycles intracellular components, plays a pivotal role in maintaining plant growth, development, and stress tolerance. Emerging evidence indicates that autophagy is tightly interconnected with phytohormone signaling networks, which coordinate plant physiological processes through transcriptional and metabolic regulation. Recent studies have revealed a bidirectional regulatory relationship between these systems. On the one hand, aAutophagy modulates phytohormone pathways by selectively degrading key signaling components, such as repressors in jasmonic acid signaling and regulators of abscisic acid responses, thereby fine-tuning hormonal outputs. ConverselyOn the other hand, phytohormones including abscisic acid, ethylene, and salicylic acid can directly influence autophagy activity by controlling the expression of autophagy-related genes and thus the formation of autophagosomes. This dynamic crosstalk enables plants to integrate developmental programs with environmental cues.Intriguingly, this critical process is tightly related to phytohormones, which orchestrate a wide range of physiological processes by modulating gene expression and cellular metabolism as key signaling molecules. In recent years, accumulating evidence has revealed intricate crosstalk between autophagy and phytohormones, which collectively fine-tunes plant responses to developmental cues in vivo and environmental stimuli in vitro. Here, we systematically summarizeThis review systematically summarizes the most comprehensive and latest advances in our understanding of how autophagy and phytohormones coordinately regulate plant physiological processes.autophagy regulates phytohormone signaling pathways and, conversely, how phytohormones regulate autophagy activity. By integrating current research findings, this review establishes a comprehensive frame-work to elucidate the interactions between autophagy and phytohormones in regulating plant physiological processes. Finally, we We also propose unresolved questions and future research directions to advance our knowledge of this essential regulatory network.
Keywords: Atg genes, Autophagy, nutrient deficiency, phytohormones, plant growth and development, stress response
Received: 06 Jan 2026; Accepted: 09 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Pang, Tian, Cao, Chen, Hu and Liu. 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: Fen Liu
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