Role of Secondary Metabolites to Attenuate Stress Damages in Plants

Plants are constantly facing various threats posed by the biotic and abiotic stressors. To survive in these challenged environment, plants evolve a variety of defense mechanism. Among the various phytochemicals, secondary metabolites (SMs) accumulate higher amount under stressful conditions and initiate signaling functions to up-regulation of defense responsive genes. SMs ensures the survival, persistence and competitiveness of the plant against the threat generated under stressful conditions. Therefore, the signaling functions of SMs to protect the plant from biotic and abiotic stressors are getting importance in the recent times. In this chapter the contribution of SMs to protect the plant from specific environmental stresses has been discussed.