Microbial production of plant hormones: Opportunities and challenges

Plant hormones are a class of organic substances which are synthesized during the plant metabolism. They have obvious physiological effect on plant growth at very low concentrations. Generally, plant hormones are mainly divided into 5 categories: auxins, cytokinins, ethylene, gibberellins (GAs) and abscisic acid (ABA). With the deepening of research, some novel plant hormones such as brassinosteroid and salicylates have been found and identified. The plant hormone products are mainly obtained through plant extraction, chemical synthesis as well as microbial fermentation. However, the extremely low yield in plants and relatively complex chemical structure limit the development of the former 2 approaches. Therefore, more attention has been paid into the microbial fermentative production. In this commentary, the developments and technological achievements of the 2 important plant hormones (GAs and ABA) have been discussed. The discovery, producing strains, fermentation technologies, and their accumulation mechanisms are first introduced. Furthermore, progresses in the industrial mass scale production are discussed. Finally, guidelines for future studies for GAs and ABA production are proposed in light of the current progress, challenges and trends in the field. With the widespread use of plant hormones in agriculture, we believe that the microbial production of plant hormones will have a bright future.