## 1 Introduction  
The Mediterranean area faces a critical challenge, with the expected worsening of freshwater shortages and increased soil and water salinization due to climate change [1,2]. The stress on freshwater resources is intensified by the region's demographic and economic pressures, demanding comprehensive adaptation and mitigation strategies [3]. In this region, small ruminants have a substantial economic, cultural, and ecological impact, providing meat, milk, and wool [3,4]. These resilient animals are well-adapted to the harsh Mediterranean conditions, taking advantage of mountainous, degraded, and marginal lands [4]. However, climate change will similarly challenge ruminant farming systems by impairing animal performance and reproduction, limiting feed and forage quality and freshwater availability, and altering disease transmission patterns [5]; thus, novel resources that can aid in mitigating these issues need to be discovered. To such ends, bioactive plants play a role in the development of innovative integrated strategies to improve the ruminant nutrition, health, and quality of their derived food products, either as feed or nutraceutical or phytotherapeutic options. Our research posits that salt-tolerant plants indigenous to the Mediterranean, given their resilience to aridity and saline soils, hold promise as bioactive plants or as sources of nutraceutical or phytotherapeutic products targeting animal health improvement. Their robustness under Mediterranean climatic stresses may ensure their status as a reliable resource during the semi-arid and dry seasons, which are notorious for water and feed shortages, thereby supporting more sustainable farming practices [6,7]. The traditional utilization of various species in food and feed practices, such as _Atriplex_ L sp. and _Plantago_ L sp., underscores their suitability for animal maintenance and productivity [7, 8, 9, 10]. Furthermore, this heterogeneous group of plants is recognized for their abundance of antioxidants, such as phenolic compounds [11] and minerals [12, 13, 14], contributing to improved animal health, well-being, and quality of the animal products for human health. In veterinary parasitology, nutraceutical plants are \"_a livestock feed which combines nutritional value with beneficial effects on animal health_\", whereas phytotherapeutics are plant-derived products administered to the animals for short-term periods mainly for treatment purposes [15]. Both concepts converge on the premise that the plants under study are endowed with bioactive metabolites in adequate concentrations to exert beneficial effects, and polyphenols have been in the spotlight for their numerous biological properties, including their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anthelmmitic properties [15,16]. The inclusion of polyphenols in the diets of small ruminants has proven to be beneficial not only for the animals' health and productivity but also in enhancing the quality of dairy and meat [17, 18, 19], aligning with the principles of the Mediterranean diet and focusing on improved health outcomes for both animals and humans. A challenge that is encountered whenever wild plants are explored is that fluctuations in the biomass composition and metabolites' concentration, driven by plant-specific and environmental factors, consequently influence their chemical and biological properties [20,21]. Unveiling these changes is crucial for a rational exploitation and valorization of these plants, particularly in defining optimal harvesting periods, either to ensure nutritional quality or to maximize the extraction of the bioactive metabolites of interest (e.g., polyphenols). Although the chemical profile and bioactivities of many of these salt-tolerant species have been previously reported, works addressing their seasonal variability remain scarce. In this sense, this work goes beyond existing research by providing a comprehensive assessment of the seasonality of nutrient compositions and the phenolic content of salt-tolerant species.