review · Frontiers in Plant Science
The phenylpropanoid pathway serves as a vital precursor to more than 8,000 plant metabolites, including flavonoids, lignin, and their derivatives. These compounds play crucial roles in plant development and offer protection against biotic and abiotic challenges such as pests, diseases, drought, extreme temperatures, ultraviolet radiation, and nutrient stress. A comprehensive evaluation of recent research details the biosynthesis of these compounds alongside the post-transcriptional, post-translational, and epigenetic mechanisms that regulate their metabolism. Understanding these regulatory layers is central to targeting the pathway for developing climate-resilient crops. Furthermore, examining strategies for metabolic optimisation provides insight into how these essential compounds can be produced at scale. Overall, the synthesis outlines recent breakthroughs in plant stress tolerance and metabolic regulation.
As changing environmental conditions intensify stress on agriculture, identifying how crops protect themselves is essential. The phenylpropanoid pathway produces compounds that help plants survive drought, pests, and extreme weather. Insights into how these natural defences are regulated can inform strategies to breed or engineer hardier crops, supporting long-term food security and sustainable agricultural production.
The synthesis highlights opportunities for crop breeders, agricultural biotechnology companies, and biomanufacturers interested in developing climate-resilient crops or optimising the large-scale production of phenylpropanoid metabolites. Because the review surveys diverse biological insights alongside production optimisation strategies, the work reflects an early-stage to translational foundation. Commercial adoption depends on translating these molecular regulatory mechanisms and scaling techniques into field-ready crop varieties or industrial bioprocessing systems.
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The phenylpropanoid pathway remains a key target for most climate-resilient crop development, owing to it being a precursor to over 8000 metabolites, including flavonoids and lignin compounds, including their derivatives. These metabolites are involved in biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, inviting several studies into their roles in plant defense, drought, temperature, UV, and nutrient stress tolerance. Literature is currently inundated with cutting-edge reports on the phenylpropanoid pathways and their functions. Here, we provide a comprehensive update on the biosynthesis of phenylpropanoids, mainly lignin and flavonoids, their roles in biotic and abiotic interaction, and transcending topics, including pest and diseases, drought, temperature, and UV stress tolerance. We further reviewed the post-transcriptional, post-translational, and epigenetic modifications regulating phenylpropanoid metabolism and highlighted their applications and optimization strategies for large-scale production. This review provides an all-inclusive update on recent reports on the metabolism of phenylpropanoids in plants.
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DOI: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1571825
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