In this essay we highlight recent progress in and the near term potential of four long standing grand challenges in plant metabolic engineering two deal with important applications in food and energy while the remaining two are of general utility in improving plant fitness and in principle would be useful for improving plants as a chassis for other metabolic engineering efforts. Applications resulting from metabolic engineering are expected to play a very important role in future for plant breeding eg for improved resistance or improved traits concerning health promoting constituents and production of fine chemicals such as medicines flavors and fragrances. Up to 90 off textbooks at amazon canada plus free two day shipping for six months when you sign up for amazon prime for students. Metabolic engineering of terpenoids in plants is a fascinating research topic from two main perspectives on the one hand the various biological activities of these compounds make their