Plants and plant cells are emerging as promising alternatives for biopharmaceutical production with improved safety and efficiency. Plant cells are capable of performing post-translational modifications (PTMs) similar to those of mammalian cells and are safer than mammalian cells with regard to contamination by infectious pathogens, including animal viruses. However, a major obstacle to producing biopharmaceuticals in plants lies in the fact that plant-derived N-glycans include plant-specific sugar residues such as b1,2-xylose and a1,3-fucose attached to a pentasaccharide core (Man 3 GlcNAc 2 ) as well as b1,3-galactose and a1,4-fucose involved in Lewis a (Le a ) epitope formation that can evoke allergic responses in the human body. In addition, sugar residues such as a1,6-fucose, b1,4-galactose and a2,6-sialic acid, which are thought to play important roles in the activity, transport, delivery and halflife of biopharmaceuticals are absent among the N-glycans naturally found in plants. In order to take advantage of plant cells as a system in which to produce biopharmaceuticals development of plants producing N-glycan structures compatible with biopharmaceuticals is necessary. In this article we summarize the current state of biopharmaceutical production using plants as well as what is known about N-glycosylation processes occurring in the endoplasmic reticulum and Golgi apparatus in plants. Finally, we propose and discuss a strategy for and the associated technical barriers of producing customized N-glycans via removal of enzyme genes that add plantspecific sugar residues and introducing enzyme genes that add sugar residues absent in plants.