About this Research Topic

Background

Plants are subject to Darwinian selection and can adjust genetically or phenotypically to their environment to maximize fitness. Over the past century, a wealth of concepts and hypotheses have been proposed and tested on various aspects of plant resilience, adaptation, and acclimation to environmental changes. These efforts have applied experimental, modeling, meta-analysis and/or other approaches to characterize the numerous processes and mechanisms that plants have developed in response to environmental change. This includes modifications of key plant functions, structures, and/or morphologies to fit into the environmental changes along the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, including canopy water use, stomatal behavior, photosynthetic capacity, root nitrogen uptake, and phenology, across molecular, cellular, organ, whole-plant, and ecosystem scales.

Studying plant responses to changing environmental factors and investigating the general trends of response variation among genotypes, species, and functional types have always been a major focus in plant sciences. In recent years, our knowledge in this area has dramatically improved with the introduction of innovative techniques and technologies, such as gene editing, sensing, and the Internet of Things (IoT), coupled with new data at various scales. This research topic aims to present an overview of the latest discoveries in this area, inviting global researchers to provide the community with their outstanding contributions.

In this Research Topic, we welcome submissions of all article types published by Frontiers in Plant Science, including original research, reviews, and perspectives, that dissect the plant responses to variable environmental conditions. We encourage contributions involving experiments conducted both in the field and under controlled environments, as well as the work involving modeling, experiment-model integration, and meta-analyses. Both fundamental and applied research are welcome, including studies on cultivated crops and agricultural systems. Quantitative studies that report responses of crop growth, yield, or quality to environmental changes (e.g., climate, soil, management practices, etc.) will be considered relevant if they advance our physiological understanding of these responses. Articles proposing novel practices to mitigate the negative effects of stress on plants are also within scope, provided they are supported by a hypothesized and at least partially demonstrated mechanism.

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Aboveground and belowground responses, their interactions, and coordinated mechanisms.
• Source-sink relationships, carbon and water trade-offs, and the interface of carbon and nitrogen fluxes at (above- and below-ground) organ, plant, and system scales.
• Resource use efficiency (e.g., light, water, nutrients, etc.); resource acquisition and investment strategies; footprints of water and nutrients along the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum.
• Multi-factors and interactions between abiotic and biotic stresses (e.g., pests and pathogens associated with drought and heatwave events)
• Temporal scales (e.g., stress sensitivity and acclimation); multiple seasons (e.g., life cycles or lagged effects of pathogens and pests).
• Leveraging stress situations to improve plant or crop performance.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Editorial
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Editorial
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: acclimation, adaptation, abiotic stress, biotic stress, climate change, drought, heat stress, resilience, root system, salinity

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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