Plant secondary metabolic responses to global climate change: A meta-analysis in medicinal and aromatic plants

Plant secondary metabolites (SMs) play crucial roles in plant-environment interactions and contribute greatly to human health. Global climate changes are expected to dramatically affect plant secondary metabolism, yet a systematic understanding of such influences is still lacking. Here, we employed medicinal and aromatic plants (MAAPs) as model plant taxa and performed a meta-analysis from 360 publications using 1828 paired observations to assess the responses of different SMs levels and the accompanying plant traits to elevated carbon dioxide (eCO2), elevated temperature (eT), elevated nitrogen deposition (eN), and decreased precipitation (dP). The overall results showed that phenolic and terpenoid levels generally respond positively to eCO2 but negatively to eN, while the total alkaloid concentration was increased remarkably by eN. By contrast, dP promotes the levels of all SMs, while eT exclusively exerts a positive influence on the levels of phenolic compounds. Further analysis high...

植物次生代谢物（Secondary Metabolites，SMs）在植物与环境的互作过程中发挥关键作用，同时对人体健康具有重要贡献。全球气候变化预计将对植物次生代谢产生显著影响，但目前学界对这类影响仍缺乏系统性认知。本研究以药用与芳香植物（Medicinal and Aromatic Plants, MAAPs）为模式植物类群，整合360篇已发表文献中的1828组配对观测数据开展元分析，以评估不同次生代谢物水平及伴随的植物性状对二氧化碳浓度升高（eCO2）、升温（eT）、氮沉降增加（eN）以及降水减少（dP）的响应模式。整体分析结果显示，酚类与萜类物质的含量通常对eCO2呈正响应、对eN呈负响应；而总生物碱浓度会因eN显著升高。与之相对，dP会提升所有SMs的含量，而eT仅对酚类物质的含量产生正向影响。进一步分析显示……