Recent Advances in the Production of Plant Bioactive Compounds by Horticultural Crops through Agronomical and Biotechnological Approaches

Dear Colleagues,

Plants crops face a wide range of environmental conditions and biotic threats that eventually induce of plant stress. As sessile organisms, plants adapt their metabolism to cope with such stressful conditions, driven by either abiotic or biotic causes. Specialized metabolites are widely known to be responsible for the adaptive and defensive responses of plant organisms under stress. Thanks to their functional role, plant specialized metabolites have gained much attention for their health-enhancing properties, as they act as effective antioxidant and antimicrobial agents that can be incorporated in nutraceutical and cosmetic formulations. Consequently, the controlled induction of plant stress is regarded as an effective strategy to produce phytochemicals with high value for economically important sectors, such as the horticultural and agricultural industries. In this sense, several families of plant specialized metabolites have been successfully produced from industrially exploited crops, ranging from polyphenols and pigments to more sophisticated compounds, i.e.,: biosugars, essential amino acids and fatty acids, alkaloids, terpenoids, and aromatic compounds, among others.

In this Special Issue, authors are invited to contribute research articles or reviews focused on novel approaches to the production of plant bioactive compounds from horticultural crops, including: phytochemical research, combining analytical and functional studies; the performance of new agronomical techniques, such as the application of biostimulants to induce significant defensive responses to mitigate plant stress; and the establishment of biotechnological systems, which involve the design of controlled biological platforms under elicitation that may act as biofactories of natural bioactive compounds.

Dr. Pascual García-Pérez
Dr. Lucía Cassani
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Horticulturae is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• phytochemistry
• crop science
• biostimulants
• biotechnology
• agronomical practices
• elicitation