Enhancing the Growth, Quality, and Stress Resistance of Medicinal Plants: Advances in Genetic, Metabolic, and Cultivation Strategies

Medicinal plants have long been fundamental to traditional and modern healthcare, serving as a rich source of bioactive compounds for pharmaceutical development. However, their sustainable utilization faces significant challenges, including low yields of bioactive compounds, limited cultivation efficiency, and vulnerability to environmental stressors. Recent advances in genomics, metabolic engineering, and microbiome research have created new opportunities to overcome these barriers.

CRISPR-based gene editing technologies have greatly improved our capacity to characterize gene function, especially for genes encoding biosynthetic enzymes responsible for the production of bioactive compounds and increasing yield in medicinal plants. Additionally, microbial-mediated strategies are shedding light on how plant-microbe interactions can enhance nutrient uptake, disease resistance, and metabolite biosynthesis.

This Research Topic seeks to address the underlying mechanisms that can enhance the growth, quality, and stress resistance of medicinal plants through genetic, metabolic, and cultivation strategies. A focus is placed on the urgent need to improve medicinal plant productivity and bioactive compound synthesis in the context of increasing environmental and agricultural pressures. Current challenges include inefficient metabolic pathways, yield limitations, and susceptibility to both biotic and abiotic stresses. To tackle these, we emphasize the integration of genomic, transcriptomic, and multi-omics analyses to explore key enzyme genes in biosynthetic pathways or those associated with yield increases, as well as the functional validation of these genes using CRISPR-based technologies. Microbial-mediated mechanisms that promote plant growth, stress tolerance, and secondary metabolism are also of great importance in medicinal plant research.

We welcome all types of manuscripts (Original Research, Opinion, Perspectives, Methods, and Reviews) covering, but not limited to, the following topics:

• Exploration and validation of key enzyme genes in the biosynthetic pathways of bioactive compounds or genes related to yield increase in medicinal plants, using genomic, transcriptomic, and multi-omics approaches.
• Gene editing and functional validation of key enzyme genes in secondary metabolite pathways, using CRISPR/Cas9, base editing, or related technologies.
• Microbial-mediated enhancement: elucidating the mechanisms of plant-microbe interactions (including bacteria and fungi) in promoting growth, stress tolerance, and secondary metabolism in medicinal plants.
• Optimization of microbial inoculants and soil ecology: investigation of molecular mechanisms and ecological impacts on medicinal plants.

Keywords: medicinal plant, comparative genomic analysis, multi-omics, gene editing, plant-microbe interaction, cultivation strategy

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.