Biostimulants as Physiological Modulators of Crop Performance and Product Quality

Dear Colleagues,

The world’s horticultural systems face a great balancing act between two needs, on one side to raise the supply of food produced on the available farmland, since the global population will increase to more than 10 billion by 2050, and on the other side to reduce agriculture’s impact on the environment and human health. Meeting these two targets presents a major sustainability challenge to scientists and producers, which might be fostered by using natural products known as plant biostimulants. A plant biostimulant has recently been defined in the regulations (EU) 2019/1009 of the European Parliament and Council (EC) as an “EU fertilising product able to stimulate plant nutrition processes independently of the product’s nutrient content with the sole aim of improving one or more of the following characteristics of the plant or the plant rhizosphere: 1) nutrient use efficiency, 2) tolerance to abiotic stress, 3) quality traits, or 4) availability of confined nutrients in the soil or rhizosphere”. Plant biostimulants, by this definition, include several substances with bioactive properties: seaweed and plant extracts, humic and fulvic acids, protein hydrolysates and silicon, as well as some-plant growth-promoting microorganisms: mycorrhizal fungi and plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria.

Following the huge success of the first Special Issue, “Toward a Sustainable Agriculture Through Plant Biostimulants: From Experimental Data to Practical Applications”, we have decided to launch a second Special Issue entitled “Biostimulants as Physiological Modulators of Crop Performance and Product Quality”. This Special Issue invites original research, technology report, methods, opinion, perspectives, and invited reviews and mini reviews dissecting the biostimulation action of these natural compounds and substances and beneficial microorganisms on crops grown under optimal and suboptimal growing conditions (e.g., salinity, drought, nutrient deficiency and toxicity, heavy metal contaminations, waterlogging, and adverse soil pH conditions). Also of interest are potential contributions dealing with the effect as well as the molecular and physiological mechanisms of plant biostimulants on nutrient efficiency, product quality, post-harvest, and the modulation of the microbial population quantitatively and qualitatively. In addition, identification and understanding of the optimal method, time, rate of application, and phenological stage for improving plant performance and resilience to stress as well as the best plant species/cultivar × environment × management practices combinations will be considered within the general scope of the Special Issue. We strongly believe that this compilation of high-standard scientific papers on principles and practices of plant biostimulants will foster knowledge transfer among scientific communities, industries, and agronomists and will enable a better understanding of the mode of action and application procedure of biostimulants in different cropping systems.

Prof. Youssef Rouphael
Prof. Giuseppe Colla
Guest Editors

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