Tapping the biological and chemical diversity of Canada's plants: An interdisciplinary approach

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Plant metabolites are vital to global ecosystems and economies. Ecologically, they sustain food chains, mediate interspecific interactions, and shape co-evolutionary relationships. Economically, humans have harnessed plant chemistry for food, medicine, pesticides, biofuels and other industrial or cultural purposes. In Canada, despite unsurpassed boreal and arctic biodiversity, distinct southern ecosystems and rich indigenous traditional knowledge, our plants remain surprisingly unexplored and underdeveloped by science. Moreover, while the ecology and human uses of plants are fundamentally linked through the biochemical effects generated by plant chemistry, the two perspectives are seldom integrated and explored to provide insight on one another.