About this Research Topic

Background

Due to their fixed growth patterns, plants are vulnerable to pests and diseases. Therefore, the growth-defense trade-off needs to be prioritized. These trade-offs have profound implications for agricultural and natural ecosystems, as growth and defense processes are closely related to plant survival and reproduction. While the molecular mechanisms underlying growth and defense trade-offs remain to be elucidated, hormonal crosstalk has emerged as a major player in regulating the balance. Understanding the basis of these trade-offs in plants should inform the development of an optimized breeding strategy to maximize crop yields to meet the growing global demand for food and biofuels.

Exploring the specific molecular interactions that promote these trade-offs will provide powerful tools for genetically tailoring plants to optimize this balance to maximize crop yields under fluctuating environmental conditions. This research topic aims to observe plant growth and plant-pathogen interactions at the cellular level to generate valuable insights into the relationship between the temporal and subcellular localization of molecular interactions and distinguish between local and global effects on plant growth and defense.

Establishing the basis of individual signaling pathways is critical, but it is also necessary to design experiments that more accurately reflect the natural environment to identify network interactions and putative molecular mechanisms. 'Omics' approaches enable global visualization of changes in gene expression and protein profiles, and they provide snapshots that capture dynamic spatiotemporal growth-defense interaction processes. Exogenous application of inducers/hormones and stable genetic manipulation may lead to the identification of interactions that do not exist in nature.

The scope of this research topic covers topics related to plant growth-resistance balance, with particular focus on the following areas:

• Plant disease resistance genes and gene-to-gene interactions.

• Effects of plant hormones and related metabolic pathways on plant growth and disease resistance.

• Multi-omics comparative study on the mechanism of plant disease resistance-growth balance.

• Effects of exogenous application of plant growth regulators/chemicals and gene editing on plant disease resistance-growth balance.

Keywords: growth-patterns, pests, trade-offs, molecular interactions, crop yield, subcellular, omics, gene expression, hormones, resistance, disease

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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