In eukaryotes, autophagy helps maintain cellular homeostasis by degrading and recycling cyto-plasmic materials via a tightly regulated pathway. Over the past few decades, significant progress has been made towards understanding the phys-iological functions and molecular regulation of autophagy in plant cells. Increasing evidence in-dicates that autophagy is essential for plant re-sponses to several developmental and environ-mental cues, functioning in diverse processes such as senescence, male fertility, root meristem maintenance, responses to nutrient starvation, and biotic and abiotic stress. Recent studies have demonstrated that, similar to nonplant systems, the modulation of core proteins in the plant autophagy machinery by posttranslational mod-ifications such as phosphorylation, ubiquitination, lipidation, S-sulfhydration, S-nitrosylation, and acetylation is widely involved in the initiation and progression of autophagy. Here, we provide an overview of the physiological roles and post-translational regulation of autophagy in plants.