Living in a complex environment and surrounded by soil organisms, plants secrete metabolites as spatial chemical signals to convey messages and respond to specific stimuli in rhizospheric communications with neighboring plants, soil microbes and parasites. Many of these specialized signals derive from secondary metabolic pathways. For instance, the breakdown of carotenoids provides the precursor for the plant hormone strigolactones that govern a major role in the communication with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and establishing the related symbiosis, as well as in the interaction with root parasitic plants. In addition to plant hormones, chemical ecology research has revealed many intriguing metabolites involved in the rhizospheric interactions, such as 6-methoxy-2-benzoxazolinone, blumenols, camalexin, 7′-4′-dihydroxyflavone, azelaic acid glycosides, and naphthoquinones. These and other root-released, specialized secondary metabolites can be harnessed for increasing the performance of crops and their resilience to biotic and abiotic stress conditions.

In recent years, significant advances have shaped our understanding of the role of secondary metabolites in regulating different aspects of plant life. However, the interactions of root-released specialized compounds with surrounding organisms remain largely under investigated and unexploited. In particular, there is large gap in identifying and understanding the role of these metabolites in plant-plant communication and the responses they provoke in the living environment, including microorganisms. In addition, our knowledge about the chemical composition of root exudates under different growth conditions is still limited. Indeed, identifying released secondary metabolites and designing synthetic analogs and mimics is of high significance for basic biological sciences as well as for agricultural applications. Here, we propose a Research Topic about allelopathic, rhizospheric secondary metabolites, which covers their role in plant growth, development and adaptation, plant communications with other plants, animals, fungi and microbes, as well as their potential for agricultural applications.

Considering the subject presented in this Research Topic, we enthusiastically encourage the submission of all article types published in Frontiers in Plant Science that advance the knowledge and understanding of rhizospheric, specialized metabolites with respect to:
• Root-released metabolites involved in plant-plant, -animal, -microbe interactions
• Impact of root-released metabolites on soil microbial and fungal communities
• Metabolite profiling of plant exudates
• Biological functions of root-released specialized metabolites in plants under biotic and abiotic stress conditions
• Combination of transcriptome and metabolome technologies for investigating rhizosphere communications
• Development of mimics and analogs of rhizospheric, specialized metabolites for basic science and agricultural applications

Disclaimer: We welcome submissions of different article types, but descriptive studies without biological advances will be rejected without peer review.

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