Abstract: This review describes various biosynthetic pathways of femaleproduced moth pheromones based on their chemical structural types. Most of moths produce a variety of unsaturated acetate, aldehyde and alcohol pheromones by a speciesspecific combination of Δ¹¹ or other desaturations, chain shortening reactions, reductions and acetylations or oxidations from endogenous fatty acids. Δ¹¹ desaturase, that plays a predominant role in introduction of a double bond in many pheromones, oxidase and acetyltransferase have been respectively characterized in several moth species, while chain shortening enzyme and reductase have not been characterized. In contrast to above biosynthetic type, other moths biosynthesize their hydrocarbon or it's monoepoxy derivative pheromones by a speciesspecific combination of chain elongations, reductive decarboxylations and epoxydations from exogenous fatty acids. Many moths use a specific ratio of geometric or positional isomers in their pheromones. It has been demonstrated that it is the substrate specificities of one or more key biosynthetic enzymes responsible for the production of specific ratio of pheromone components in several species. Furthermore, the similarities and differences of some key biosynthetic enzymes in different species or genetic strains are compared in order to elucidate the important role of these enzymes in moth evolution.

Key words: moth sex pheromone, biosynthesis, enzymes, specific isomeric ratio, evolution