About this Research Topic

Background

This Research Topic aims to collect selected contributions from 1st Brazilian Symposium on Photosynthesis: Perspectives to improve photosynthetic efficiency in a climate change scenario, to be held ONLINE, on 27 - 30 October 2020, as well as spontaneous submissions from experts working in the subject.

Photosynthesis is the most important biological process for maintaining life on Earth. Over hundreds of millions of years, evolutionary pressures have led plants to develop several complex mechanisms for regulating photosynthesis. These processes allow plants to adjust their photosynthetic efficiency to diverse environmental conditions, i.e. controlling the balance between light energy consumption and biomass production, to survive. Therefore, dynamic regulation of photosynthetic efficiency has allowed plants to tolerate a wide range of stress conditions. However, the increase in demand for food and animal feed has pushed the agricultural production systems to their limits. Despite increasing crop productivities over the last 60 years, much of this advance relied on deforestation and outdated approaches. This makes it necessary for new technologies to emerge, realizing further increases in crop yields as well as nutritional value, and improving land-use efficiency. To achieve these demands, increasing photosynthetic efficiency in cultivated plants is vital. Thus, understanding the contributions of water and light availability, changes in temperature, nutritional requirements, and occurrence of plant-pathogen interactions for photosynthetic inefficiencies is likely a crucial strategy to increase crop productivity sustainably. In parallel, understanding the importance of some photoprotective mechanisms commonly studied in model plants and their potential application to increase crop production is a fundamental step in this process. However, many studies still have limited application of integrative approaches, as well as few studies involving the use of combined adverse environmental conditions (biotic and abiotic), which has limited application to real-world crop production.

This Research Topic aims to gather studies about the molecular, biochemical, physiological, and anatomical mechanisms involved in the regulation of photosynthetic efficiency of plants in the face of multiple stress conditions. Studies involving multi-disciplinary integrative approaches, combinations of different environmental factors (including plant interactions of biotic and abiotic nature), and fluctuating environmental conditions will be prioritized. Above all, the authors should provide consistent perspectives on crop productivity, i.e., clearly attesting how the obtained data could contribute to increasing crop yield, nutritional value, and/or land-use efficiency under field conditions.

This Research Topic aims to publish reviews, mini-reviews, and original research articles that feature:

1) Studies addressing the mechanisms for regulating the photosynthetic efficiency of model plants or crops in response to multiple abiotic or biotic stresses.
2) Integrative studies, involving the combination of multiple stresses (biotic and abiotic), fluctuating environments, and combinations of multiple study tools in plant biology (for instance: physiology, biochemistry, biophysics, molecular biology, anatomy, and omics), addressed in an integrative way.
3) Contributions must clearly attest to the prospects of the study for its applicability for increasing crop productivity, nutritional value, and/or land-use efficiency under field conditions.

Please note that descriptive studies that report changes in photosynthetic efficiency to responses biotic or abiotic stresses will not be considered if they do not progress physiological understanding of these responses.

Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

Keywords: Photosynthesis efficiency, abiotic stress, biotic stress, climate change, Multiple Stress Conditions, Crop productivity

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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