Understanding and engineering of aroma compounds in crops

Abstract

Plants produce and emit a wide array of aroma compounds. These aroma compounds are extensively utilized in cosmetics, healthcare, and the food industry. In the last few years, the research on aroma compounds has made great progress. For some valuable economic crops including gain crops, fruits, vegetables and flowers, the main fragrance compounds have been identified. In this review, we summarized the important role and great potential of aroma compounds for crops and humans. Aroma compounds mainly originate from four major biosynthetic pathways in plants, including fatty acid, amino acid, terpenoid and carotenoid pathways, producing all kinds of substances including esters, alcohols, aldehydes, ketones, terpene, and sulfur compounds, etc. Importantly, we discussed the development of genetic engineering and its application potential in enhancing plant fragrance, especially the CRISPR/Cas9 system. We hope this review will provide insights into the fragrance improvement of the economic crops.