Meteorological Stress Impacts on Crop Physiology and Productivity Under Climate Change: Mechanisms, Resilience, and Adaptation

Dear Colleagues,

In major agricultural regions, meteorological extremes are already causing substantial and identifiable impacts on crop production. Compound heat and drought during flowering and grain filling have repeatedly reduced wheat and maize productivity across mid-latitude breadbaskets in North America, Europe, and northern China. In East and South Asia, episodes of intense monsoon rainfall and waterlogging increasingly coincide with sensitive reproductive stages of rice, while prolonged dry spells are becoming recurrent constraints in the Mediterranean basin and semi-arid regions of sub-Saharan Africa and Australia. Importantly, the magnitude of these impacts depends not only on the intensity and duration of a meteorological stress, but also on when it occurs relative to critical phenological stages such as flowering, grain set, and early grain filling, when crop physiological systems have limited capacity to compensate.

Meteorological stresses can disrupt photosynthesis, plant–water relations, nutrient uptake, hormonal signaling, and reproductive development, ultimately affecting biomass accumulation, yield formation, and crop quality. Crops possess morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms that confer resilience to environmental stress. However, increasing stress intensity, duration, and recurrence, together with the growing occurrence of compound and sequential extremes, are increasingly exceeding these physiological resilience thresholds, resulting in measurable yield and quality losses.

Although numerous Special Issues have already addressed climate-change impacts on agriculture, weather–crop interactions, drought responses, plant adaptation, and broader agrometeorological monitoring and modeling, an important gap remains: a focused examination of the mechanistic pathway linking the type, timing, and combination of meteorological stresses to physiological disruption and, ultimately, to crop yield and quality loss. This Special Issue therefore focuses on the three-way link between meteorological stress, crop physiology, and productivity, recognizing that crops possess adaptive mechanisms but that these mechanisms may be overwhelmed when stresses intensify, recur, or occur in combination. We aim to clarify how meteorological stress propagates through physiological processes to affect productivity and to identify practical interventions capable of interrupting this pathway.

We invite contributions addressing the following themes:

1. Physiological mechanisms underlying crop responses to meteorological stresses, with emphasis on stress timing and phenological sensitivity, particularly during critical developmental stages such as flowering, grain set, and grain filling.
2. Effects of regionally characteristic sequences and combinations of meteorological extremes on crop physiology and yield formation, including compound or sequential heat, drought, heavy precipitation, and waterlogging events, particularly in under-represented regions and cropping systems where such stress patterns are becoming recurrent.
3. Application of remote sensing, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and crop modeling to detect, quantify, and predict physiological responses to meteorological stress. Emphasis is placed on predicting biomass, yield, and quality across relevant spatial and temporal scales, including the integration of multi-source data for improved forecasting.
4. Agronomic strategies that enhance crop physiological resilience to meteorological stress, including field water management, nutrient/fertilizer management, chemical regulation, sowing date adjustment, cultivar selection, and research on the scalability and cost effectiveness of these interventions.

We particularly encourage interdisciplinary contributions that bridge plant physiology, agronomy, meteorology, remote sensing, and ecological or crop modeling, as well as studies addressing knowledge gaps in under-represented regions and cropping systems. By elucidating the pathway from meteorological stress through physiological disruption to yield and quality loss, and by identifying actionable strategies that can interrupt this pathway, this Special Issue aims to advance both mechanistic understanding and practical adaptation of crop production under increasingly variable and extreme weather conditions.

Dr. Xiaodong Jiang
Guest Editor

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• climate change
• meteorological stress
• extreme weather events
• crop physiology
• yield
• crop resilience
• adaptation strategies
• crop modeling
• remote sensing
• AI/ML