All organisms produce hormones, even plants. Although these small molecule compounds exist only in trace amounts it plays a pivotal role in a plant’s life cycle from germination, growth, reproduction, including how it responds to biotic and abiotic stress when in different environments.
Mapping the hormones accurately can be problematic however due to the complexity of the plant’s matrix, its wide polarity range and low concentration of hormones. Recent technological advancements may help to alleviate these roadblocks; using sample pretreatment techniques and mass spectrometric methods, researchers were able to produce dynamic and in vivo identification of the spatial distribution of plant hormones in real-life plant samples.
The paper also examines the classic extraction and modern microextraction techniques used to analyze plant hormones and provide a theoretical framework for a mass spectral database.