Cellular Signaling Networks in Crop Stress Responses: From Molecular Mechanisms to Field Performance
A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Crop Breeding and Genetics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2026 | Viewed by 8
Special Issue Editors
Interests: photosynthesis; secondary plant metabolism; biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs); abiotic and biotic stress; oxidative stress; antioxidants; invasive plant species; allelopathic mechanisms
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: epigenetics and abiotic/biotic stresses; plant breeding under abiotic and biotic stresses; breeding for weed management; relationships between wild relatives and cultivated species
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Crop plants are continuously exposed to diverse environmental stresses, including temperature extremes, drought, salinity, nutrient imbalance, and biotic challenges. These stresses are major constraints on crop productivity and yield stability across agricultural systems worldwide. To survive and adapt, crops rely on intricate cellular signaling networks that integrate environmental cues with endogenous developmental and metabolic programs.
Importantly, these signaling processes are not only central to stress perception and response at the cellular level but also directly influence agronomic traits such as yield stability, resource use efficiency, and climate resilience under field conditions. For example, drought signaling pathways in cereals, salinity responses in horticultural crops, and stress-induced regulatory networks in legumes ultimately determine crop performance across diverse environments.
This Special Issue aims to highlight recent advances in understanding the molecular, cellular, and systems-level mechanisms underlying stress perception, signal transduction, and adaptive responses in crops and model plant systems with clear translational relevance. We particularly encourage the contribution of studies that connect signaling pathways to crop performance under real or simulated agronomic conditions, including field validation and multi-environment trials.
We welcome original research articles and comprehensive reviews addressing how signaling pathways—such as hormone signaling, redox and calcium dynamics, protein–protein interaction networks, transcriptional and post-translational regulation, organelle-to-nucleus communication, and stress-induced biomolecular condensates—coordinate stress responses and resilience. Contributions employing genetic, genomic, proteomic, metabolomic, imaging, and computational approaches are encouraged, especially when integrated with agronomy-relevant methodologies such as high-throughput phenotyping, field-based stress evaluation, and crop performance analysis.
Studies that bridge fundamental signaling mechanisms with crop improvement strategies, including breeding, trait engineering, and crop management practices, are particularly welcome.
By integrating molecular insights with agronomic outcomes, this Special Issue aims to provide a comprehensive framework linking cellular signaling to crop productivity and resilience, and to identify actionable targets for improving crop performance and sustainability under real-world agricultural conditions.
Prof. Dr. Csengele Barta
Dr. Eleni Tani
Dr. Jae-Hyung Lee
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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. Agronomy 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 stress responses
- cellular signaling
- stress signal transduction
- crop productivity
- yield stability
- climate resilience
- field stress conditions
- crop improvement
- organelle signaling
- post-translational regulation
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