www.tjprc.org editor@tjprc.org MEDITERRANEAN CLIMATE AFFECTS THE BIOSYNTHESIS OF SECONDARY METABOLITES IN COMMON MEDICINAL PLANTS MAMOUCHA STAVROULA 1 & JITIN RAHUL 2 1 Department of Botany, Faculty of Biology, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece 2 Department of Environmental Science & Engineering, Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India ABSTRACT Mediterranean shrub lands and forests have to cope with a combination of several stress factors (e.g. water limitation, high temperature, irradiation, salinity, insects, herbivores etc). A single stress agent causes changes in several parameters but when more than stress factors take place, plant responses in a more complicated way. The ability of most plants to survive and recover from unfavorable environments is attributed to morphological, biochemical and anatomical strategies. The objective of this study is to emphasize the effects of common abiotic stressful factors on the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites in common Mediterranean medicinal plants. A detailed search using four electronic search engines (such as Pubmed, Science Direct, Scopus and Google Scholar) was undertaken with the search terms: drought, temperature, Mediterranean stress, secondary metabolites, medicinal plants and their combinations. Physiological responses involve changes at metabolite alteration and/or accumulation of specific molecules, leading to a particular physiological response. Abiotic stress, especially drought, have impact on the metabolic pathways. The variety of the biosynthesis of chemical compounds depends mostly on the intensity and the duration of the stress impact. Thus, before collecting plant tissue to extract bioactive compounds, the environmental conditions should be considered. KEYWORDS : Drought, Mediterranean Stress, Secondary Metabolites, Medicinal Plants Received: Aug 19, 2016; Accepted: Sep 12, 2016; Published: Sep 21, 2016; Paper Id.: IJBROCT20164 INTRODUCTION Deviations from the physiological normal plant type are known as stress reactions. The environmental stress which affects plants’ growth can be classified either as abiotic or biotic. Biotic environmental factors include interactions with microorganisms, infection or mechanical damage by herbivory as well as effects of parasitism while abiotic ones include temperature (cold, heat), light (weak light, strong light), water (drought, flooding), humidity, existence or not of nutrient compounds etc. Both stresses are potentially harmful to plants and lead to morphological, physiological, biochemical and molecular changes that affect growth and productivity (Aziz et al., 2008, Clark et al., 2008, Smetanska, 2008, Yazdani et al., 2002). Abiotic stress is much more complex than biotic one, since during abiotic stress, various factors may co-occur. Actually, in nature, stress does not generally come in isolation and many stresses act hand in hand with each other. For instance, increase in light intensity might correlate with elevated temperatures and drought stress may exist with high salt concentrations in the soil (Al-Gabbiesh et al., 2015). Combination of several stress factors is the normal case and is referred to as “multiple stress”. Original Article International Journal of Botany and Research (IJBR) ISSN(P): 2277-4815; ISSN (E): 2319-4456 Vol. 6, Issue 4, Oct 2016, 17-28 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.