Elicitation: a new perspective into plant chemo-diversity and functional property

Abstract

Sprouts are consumed as fresh foods or their flours can be added in processed products as determinants of sensory perception, product differentiation, and shelf life. Elicitation technique can be used to accumulate phytochemicals in plant sprouts thereby improving their functionality. This review summarized the recent state of knowledge on the use of elicitors to produce sprouts with improved functional properties. Elicitation using abiotic or biotic elicitors has been applied to increase the yield of sprout secondary metabolites (glucosinolates, aminobutyric acid, phenolic compounds), biological activities (antioxidant, anti-obesity, antidiabetic properties), and growth. Elicitors trigger the synthesis of plant metabolites by changing enzyme activities or gene expression related to the plant defence system. They also promote sprout growth by enhancing the levels of plant growth hormones. Elicitation is an effective method to produce sprouts with improved health benefits, and enhance their growth. Future studies are needed to identify early plant signaling pathways to fully understand elicitors’ mechanisms on plant metabolites. Moreover, further investigation can be impetus in revealing the lower and upper limits of elicitor that can be applied in sprouts without compromising health and environmental safety.

Keywords:

• Elicitation
• sprout bioactivity
• metabolite
• functional properties

Authors’ contribution statement

Simon Okomo Aloo: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Writing - original draft. Fred Kwame Ofosu: Proofreading, Deog-Hwan Oh: Conceptualization and Supervision.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported and funded by the Cooperative Research Program for Agriculture Science and Technology Development (Project No. PJ0145652021) Rural Development Administration.