Plant mitochondria facilitate complex metabolic networks differently from animals, integrating various substrates and external signals into vital energy and metabolite products for successful plant development and adaptation. Despite the conserved pathway architecture of mitochondrial respiration and primary metabolisms among the kingdoms, plant mitochondrial respiration is more tightly linked to their dynamic metabolic status in response to fluctuating environmental conditions and/or in their developmental-/tissue-specific manner (Millar et al. 2011). In many plant species, for example, the respiration rate decreases throughout the night, accompanied by a similar decrease in the levels of several primary metabolites, including sugars and amino acids. This positive correlation between respiration activity and metabolite accumulation is similarly observed when leaf discs are incubated with exogenously supplied carbohydrates or amino acids (O’Leary et al. 2017; Bruhn et al. 2022). However, the molecular mechanism behind this phenomenon has been elusive for a long time, which has hindered our understanding of the crosstalk between mitochondrial respiration and central carbon metabolism in plants.