Translate Plant Metabolism into Modern Agriculture: A Starting Point

Abstract

Plants, the primary producers on the Earth, use solar energy to convert CO2 and H2O into various organic compounds. Over the past 10 000 years, humans have exploited the plant synthesizing capability and developed agricultural practice to meet the basic needs for food, fiber, energy, chemicals, and medicines. Actually, all of the products are an assortment of compounds synthesized in plants though a variety of metabolic processes. It has been estimated that any given plant species can synthesize 5000–25 000 different compounds (Trethewey, 2004).