Sonia Chadha ^1,2* Esther Menendez ^3,4,5* Nuria Montes ^6,7*

• ¹ Nuclear Agriculture and Biotechnology Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Mumbai, India, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
• ² Homi Bhabha National Institute, Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
• ³ Departamento de Microbiología y Genética, Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain, Salamanca, Spain
• ⁴ Institute for Research in Agrobiotechnology, University of Salamanca, Villamayor, Spain
• ⁵ Associated R&D Unit, USAL-CSIC (IRNASA), Salamanca, Spain, Salamanca, Spain
• ⁶ Servicio de Reumatología, Hospital Universitario de La Princesa, Madrid, Madrid, Spain
• ⁷ Department of Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences, Faculty of Pharmacy, San Pablo CEU University, Madrid, Madrid, Spain

Frontiers has taken a commendable initiative to celebrate International Women's Day by launching a series of research topics designed to highlight and empower women researchers. The topic "Women in Microbe and Virus Interactions with Plants: 2022/2023" celebrates the women's achievements in this field, providing a platform to showcase and advance their research.The UNESCO has emphasized the need for gender equality in science as essential for sustainable worldwide development (UNESCO Call to Action, 2024). Gender equality has been discussed for decades, achieving it remains challenging, particularly in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields, where women comprise only 30% of the researchers worldwide (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2019). Women scientists frequently face obstacles in obtaining authorships, and their contributions are often underevaluated in scientific papers (Broderick and Casadevall, 2019). This perpetuates a cycle of reduced impact and limited opportunities for women scientists (Sarabi and Smith, 2023). Adressing these challenges is imperative to improve the well-being, productivity, and equity of female scientists in STEM (Van den Besselaar and Sandström, 2017). This research topic highlights the impactful contributions of women in the field of plant interactions with microbes and viruses. The collection includes five high-quality research papers that explore the complexities of plant-microbe interactions, including colonization, detection, and disease control, providing critical insights for sustainable agriculture. Crop production is significantly affected by various pathogens and pests. Addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive understanding of plant-microbe interactions, which encompass competition, commensalism, mutualism, and parasitism. Women scientists have played a pivotal role in advancing our understanding of these processes. The groundbreaking work of Lynn Margulis (Margulis, 1967) on symbiosis exemplifies this contribution. Margulis highlighted that cooperation is as important as competition in evolution, an idea that has profoundly influenced our understanding of plant-microbe interactions and has shaped critical areas of plant health and crop productivity. In summary, this research topic offers fresh insights, recent advancements, and future perspectives in the complex relationships between plants with microbes and viruses, while also addressing current challenges in agriculture and food security. Additionally, by showcasing the latest scientific advances made by women researchers, this topic promotes gender equality and encourages more women to pursue careers in STEM fields. SC: Writing -original draft; SC, NM and EM: Writing -review & editing.