Crop Microbiome and Stress: Interactions, Mechanisms, and Applications
A special issue of Agriculture (ISSN 2077-0472). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Production".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 January 2026 | Viewed by 40
Special Issue Editors
2. The Swiss National Centre of Competence in Microbiomes Research, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
3. African Genome Centre, UM6P, Ben Guerir 43150, Morocco
Interests: mycorrhizal symbiosis; arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi; genetics; rhizosphere; plant physiology; holobiont; holobiont chronobiology; co-evolution; ecology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: agroecology; crop physiological and biotechnological breeding; crop cultivation; mycorrhizal symbiosis; genetics; rhizosphere
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Understanding and harnessing plant microbiomes—which encompass the rhizosphere, endosphere, and phyllosphere communities—are essential for improving nutrient cycling, suppressing pathogens, and enhancing stress resilience in agriculture. Nonetheless, the efficacy of microbial inoculants in field trials is frequently constrained by edaphic heterogeneity, climatic fluctuations, and context-dependent plant–microbe interactions, including cultivar-specific responses. Mechanistic insights into signalling networks, metabolite exchange, and community assembly remain scarce, and multi-omics datasets are often analysed in silos.
This Special Issue tackles these bottlenecks by spotlighting high-throughput metaomics for capturing microbial diversity, spatial metabolomics to map in situ chemical dialogues, and emerging genome- and microbiome-editing tools. Systems-level modelling and machine learning approaches enable the rational design of synthetic consortia, while root-exudate engineering and holobiont-based breeding integrate microbes into plant improvement programmes. We will also address the regulatory, ethical, and socio-economic frameworks that shape field deployment.
Together, these contributions will bridge lab and field settings, offering a novel framework to harness beneficial microbiomes for use in sustainable, climate-resilient agriculture worldwide.
Dr. Soon-Jae Lee
Prof. Dr. Li Wang
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Agriculture is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- crop holobiont
- host–microbiome interaction
- co-evolution
- carbon sequestration
- climate change
- organism–environment crosstalk
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