Crops are constantly exposed to multiple adverse environmental conditions, ranging from biotic to abiotic stresses, ultimately impacting world food supply and safety. Due to enhanced pathogen attacks and increasing resistance of weeds, together with the global aim of reducing agrochemicals’ environmental footprint, research efforts must be placed on the development of eco-friendly tools to promote plant growth and control pests and diseases. Thus, chemical options, including synthetic fertilizers and herbicides, should be replaced by natural biostimulant compounds to prevent environmental degradation and enhance global food security.
Within this perspective, the development of new sensitive analytical methods could be an efficient tool to find biostimulant and biocide solutions. Today, our understanding of new-generation herbicides and biostimulants is still limited because of the lack of field validation studies and the high production cost of these new compounds. Additionally, to concretely achieve practical solutions, further insights on the mode of action of these compounds on plant secondary metabolites and signaling pathways should be disclosed. Focus can also be paid to the impacts of the natural compounds on crop-environment, weed-environment, and crop-weed interactions, to design effective control methods in the context of sustainable agriculture and food production.
In this Research Topic, we intend to gather fundamental and applied research dealing with various aspects of biostimulant and/or biocide applications, spanning from their chemodiversity to the characterization of their mode of action, efficacy, and physiological effects.
We welcome submissions on the following research topics:
• Structural diversity of natural compounds
• Discovery of new herbicide target sites
• Next generation biostimulant compounds
• Biostimulants as tools against climate change and pesticide exposure
• Impacts of climate change on herbicide application methods
• Breeding strategy for herbicide tolerance of crops
• Hormonal responses to biostimulants and biocides
Crops are constantly exposed to multiple adverse environmental conditions, ranging from biotic to abiotic stresses, ultimately impacting world food supply and safety. Due to enhanced pathogen attacks and increasing resistance of weeds, together with the global aim of reducing agrochemicals’ environmental footprint, research efforts must be placed on the development of eco-friendly tools to promote plant growth and control pests and diseases. Thus, chemical options, including synthetic fertilizers and herbicides, should be replaced by natural biostimulant compounds to prevent environmental degradation and enhance global food security.
Within this perspective, the development of new sensitive analytical methods could be an efficient tool to find biostimulant and biocide solutions. Today, our understanding of new-generation herbicides and biostimulants is still limited because of the lack of field validation studies and the high production cost of these new compounds. Additionally, to concretely achieve practical solutions, further insights on the mode of action of these compounds on plant secondary metabolites and signaling pathways should be disclosed. Focus can also be paid to the impacts of the natural compounds on crop-environment, weed-environment, and crop-weed interactions, to design effective control methods in the context of sustainable agriculture and food production.
In this Research Topic, we intend to gather fundamental and applied research dealing with various aspects of biostimulant and/or biocide applications, spanning from their chemodiversity to the characterization of their mode of action, efficacy, and physiological effects.
We welcome submissions on the following research topics:
• Structural diversity of natural compounds
• Discovery of new herbicide target sites
• Next generation biostimulant compounds
• Biostimulants as tools against climate change and pesticide exposure
• Impacts of climate change on herbicide application methods
• Breeding strategy for herbicide tolerance of crops
• Hormonal responses to biostimulants and biocides