Higher plants synthesize an amazing diversity of phenolic secondary metabolites. Phenolics are defined secondary metabolites or natural products because, originally, they were considered not essential for plant growth and development. Plant phenolics, like other natural compounds, provide the plant with specific adaptations to changing environmental conditions and, therefore, they are essential for plant defense mechanisms. Plant defensive traits are costly for plants due to the energy drain from growth toward defensive metabolite production. Being limited with environmental resources, plants have to decide how allocate these resources to various competing functions. This decision brings about trade-offs, i.e., promoting some functions by neglecting others as an inverse relationship. Many studies have been carried out in order to link an evaluation of plant performance (in terms of growth rate) with levels of defense-related metabolites. Available results suggest that environmental stresses and stress-induced phenolics could be linked by a transduction pathway that involves: (i) the proline redox cycle; (ii) the stimulated oxidative pentose phosphate pathway; and, in turn, (iii) the reduced growth of plant tissues.

Wheat bran is generally considered a byproduct of the flour milling industry, but it is a great source of fibers, minerals, and antioxidants that are important for human health. Phenolic acids are a specific class of wheat bran components that may act as antioxidants to prevent heart disease and to lower the incidence of colon cancer. Moreover, phenolic acids have anti-inflammatory properties that are potentially significant for the promotion of gastrointestinal health. Evidence on the beneficial effects of phenolic acids as well as of other wheat bran components is encouraging the use of wheat bran as an ingredient of functional foods. After an overview of the chemistry, function, and bioavailability of wheat phenolic acids, the discussion will focus on how technologies can allow the formulation of new, functional whole wheat products with enhanced health-promoting value and safety without renouncing the good-tasting standards that are required by consumers. Finally, this review summarizes the latest studies about the stability of phenolic acids in wheat foods fortified by the addition of wheat bran, pearled fractions, or wheat bran extracts.

Plants can frequently experience low oxygen concentrations due to environmental factors such as flooding or waterlogging. It has been reported that both anoxia and the transition from anoxia to re-oxygenation determine a strong imbalance in the cellular redox state involving the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitric oxide (NO). Plant cell cultures can be a suitable system to study the response to oxygen deprivation stress since a close control of physicochemical parameters is available when using bioreactors. For this purpose, Arabidopsis cell suspension cultures grown in a stirred bioreactor were subjected to a severe anoxic stress and analyzed during anoxia and re-oxygenation for alteration in ROS and NO as well as in antioxidant enzymes and metabolites. The results obtained by confocal microscopy showed the dramatic increase of ROS, H2O2 and NO during the anoxic shock. All the ascorbate-glutathione related parameters were altered during anoxia but restored during re-oxygenation. Anoxia also induced a slight but significant increase of α-tocopherol levels measured at the end of the treatment. Overall, the evaluation of cell defenses during anoxia and re-oxygenation in Arabidopsis cell cultures revealed that the immediate response involving the overproduction of reactive species activated the antioxidant machinery including ascorbate-glutathione system, α-tocopherol and the ROS-scavenging enzymes ascorbate peroxidase, catalase and peroxidase making cells able to counteract the stress towards cell survival.