Plant Metabolomics Reviews

Microplastics (MPs) have become pervasive contaminants. This is due to plastic mulching, wastewater irrigation, and sludge application. Concentrations of MPs in intensive farming regions have been recorded at 41,741 particles/kg. MPs are absorbed by crop roots and leaves and then travel to reproductive organs. In these organs, they cause oxidative stress, genotoxicity, and toxicity, which disrupts nutrient uptake, photosynthesis, and crop yield. This review summarizes 20 years (2003-2024) of...

Drought stress is among the most critical threats to global food security, and its complex impact on plant physiology often exceeds the reach of traditional breeding approaches. Metabolomics has emerged as a transformative tool for dissecting drought responses, enabling dynamic, systems-level characterization of primary and secondary metabolites that mediate osmotic balance, redox homeostasis, and stress memory. Unlike earlier reviews that mainly catalog stress-associated metabolites, this...

Spongospora subterranea f. sp. Subterranea (Sss), the causal agent of powdery scab in potatoes, is a globally important soil-borne pathogen with an obligate biotrophic lifestyle and long-lived resting spores that make it difficult to control. This paper compiles and evaluates all currently available molecular resources for Sss, including genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic datasets, providing the first comprehensive overview of the pathogen's molecular research landscape....

Plants resilience capacity to environmental variability involves both phenotypic plasticity and genetic differentiation through evolutionary selection. Metabolism, particularly primary metabolism, plays a central role in the plant-environment interface, translating environmental and genetic signals into physiological, developmental, morphological and life history responses. The woodland strawberry, Fragaria vesca, serves as an ideal model system for studying these integrated processes due to its...

Durio zibethinus, commonly known as the "king of the fruits," is widely cultivated in Southeast Asia, contributing significantly to the region's economy. In addition to commercial cultivars, numerous local edible durian species are also found in these countries. With the rapid advancement of omics technologies, extensive studies have been conducted on durians using various omics approaches. To date, omics studies have primarily focused on commercial durians (D. zibethinus), with relatively less...

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Abiotic stress, particularly heat and drought, significantly impacts plant reproductive development, threatening crop productivity and food security. Understanding stress tolerance mechanisms requires a multi-level approach that integrates physiological, biochemical, and molecular traits in different experimental settings. This review explores key methodologies for assessing resilience to single and combined abiotic stress in reproductive tissues, from growth chamber experiments to greenhouse...

Kiwifruit (Actinidia spp.) is valued for its sensory quality and nutritional richness but faces postharvest challenges such as rapid softening, chilling injury, and physiological disorders. Conventional management strategies help maintain quality yet insufficient to capture the complexity of ripening, stress physiology, and cultivar-specific variation. Recent research emphasizes the continuum from preharvest to postharvest, where orchard practices, harvest maturity, and handling conditions...

Tobamoviruses are a group of plant viruses that can cause yield losses of up to 70% and reduce fruit quality by 30-50%. Historically, tobamoviruses were dominated by tobacco mosaic virus (TMV) and tomato mosaic virus (ToMV). However, the landscape is rapidly shifting with the emergence of economically significant viruses such as tomato mottle mosaic virus (ToMMV) and tomato brown rugose fruit virus (ToBRFV). Both can circumvent the previously durable Tm-2² resistance in tomato and spread across...

Sea buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides L.) is rich in polyphenols but limited by intense flavor and low bioaccessibility of bound forms. This study used Lactiplantibacillus plantarum LP-1-679 (L. plantarum LP-1-679) to ferment sea buckthorn juice and applied widely targeted metabolomic and transcriptomic analyses to investigate the mechanisms of polyphenol transformation. Fermentation increased free phenols, improved carbohydrate hydrolase activity, and promoted the release of aglycones....

Metabolomics, which is typically referred to as the post-genomic methodology addressing low-molecular-weight metabolites, became a powerful tool in post-genomic research over the last two decades. Indeed, the state-of-the-art metabolomics relies on several well-established complementary platforms-nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy, liquid and gas chromatography coupled on-line with mass spectrometry (LC- and GC-MS, respectively), and capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry...

Peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) is a globally important oilseed and food legume, yet its productivity is persistently constrained by devastating diseases and insect pests that thrive under changing climates. This review aims to provide a comprehensive synthesis of advances in precision breeding and molecular approaches for enhancing disease and pest resistance in peanut. Traditional control measures ranging from crop rotation and cultural practices to chemical protection have delivered only partial...

The treatment of depression is an uphill battle due to the low efficiency and delayed clinical response of antidepressants and the fact that most of them cause numerous side effects. Psychobiotics, probiotics that affect brain function and confer mental health benefits, emerged as a promising ally showing protective effects against depressive- and anxiety-like behaviors in various animal models of depression. There is rapidly accumulating evidence that psychobiotics show protective effects at...

Plant-based fermented foods are increasingly promoted for glycemic control, yet their mechanisms and clinical impact remain incompletely defined. This narrative review synthesizes mechanistic, preclinical, and human data for key matrices-kimchi and other fermented vegetables, tempeh/miso/natto, and related legume ferments, kombucha and fermented teas, plant-based kefir, and cereal/pulse sourdoughs. Across these systems, microbial β-glucosidases, esterases, tannases, and phenolic-acid...

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is one of the major health threats of the 21st century and demands innovative sources of bioactive compounds. In 2019, infections caused by resistant bacteria directly accounted for 1.27 million deaths and contributed to an additional 4.95 million associated deaths, underscoring the urgency of exploring new strategies. Among emerging alternatives, specialized plant metabolites stand out, as their biosynthesis is enhanced under biotic or abiotic stress. These...

Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is a globally important crop for sugar and bioenergy production. However, genetic improvement through conventional breeding is constrained by long breeding cycles, low genetic gain, and considerable operational complexity arising from its highly allopolyploid and aneuploid genome. With the increasing global demand for sustainable food and renewable energy, sugarcane breeding programs must accelerate the development of high-yielding, stress-tolerant cultivars through...

Heat and waterlogging are critical abiotic stresses that threaten crop productivity, especially as climate change intensifies their frequency and severity. While both stresses independently disrupt essential physiological functions such as photosynthesis, respiration, and nutrient uptake, their underlying mechanisms and adaptive strategies exhibit key differences. This review presents a systematic comparison of plant responses to heat and waterlogging stress, focusing on both their shared and...

Most existing research on amahewu has primarily examined the microbial and physicochemical properties of beverages, leaving the overall metabolite profile insufficiently characterized. Metabolomic analysis enables the monitoring of metabolite shifts throughout fermentation, revealing how microbial processes drive variations in bioactive compounds. Therefore, this study employed targeted metabolomics to investigate dynamic changes in amino acids and phenolic compounds during the production of...

Edible fungi fermentation is an effective strategy for enhancing the functional value of traditional foods, while postbiotics offer multiple health benefits, primarily produced through heating. This study aimed to uncover the key components and metabolic mechanisms in Ganoderma lucidum BZ5-fermented daylilies in heat processing, providing a scientific basis for developing novel functional foods. The fermentation parameters (including daylily concentration, glucose amount, inoculum size, and...

Climate change-driven single and combined abiotic stresses pose escalating threats to sustainable, climate-smart agriculture and global food security. Melatonin (MLT, a powerful plant biostimulant) has established noteworthy potential in improving stress tolerance by regulating diverse physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses. Therefore, this review delivers a comprehensive synopsis of MLT-enabled omics responses across genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, miRNAomics,...