Plant Tissue Extraction for Metabolomics

Plants are not only important producers of foods and energy storages (e.g., sugars, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats) in the form of grains, fruits, and vegetables, they also provide many valuable products to human existence including wood, fibers, oils, resins, pigments, antioxidants, and sources of medicine. Most importantly in light of this book, plants have been a source of therapeutic and health promoting compounds throughout history. This chapter describes several essential considerations for the extraction process when aiming to study plant metabolism or to characterize the chemical composition of plant originated samples using metabolomics technologies.