Cell Biology of Drought and Heat Stress Responses in Plants

Dear Colleagues,

The Editorial Board of Cells has opened the Special Issue “Cell Biology of Drought and Heat Stress Responses in Plants” for submissions of research or review manuscripts. This is a follow up to the Special Issue “Drought and Heat Stress Signaling Responses” published in 2022. Recent examples of extreme weather patterns demonstrated devastating effects of high temperatures on ecosystems at all levels with an especially damaging impact on plant health. Drought exacerbates the detrimental impact of the heat waves by compromising plant temperature control mechanisms. It has been shown that while drought alone results in 19-50% yield losses, depending on geographical location, a combination of heat and drought can cause complete yield losses or devalue the produce. Considering the rise in annual average temperatures and increasing demand for water resources from the growing population, the combination of drought and heat poses an existential threat to our life. Hence, it is imperative to combine efforts in dissecting mechanisms of plant responses to these stresses on all levels. Understanding changes in cellular dynamics under heat and drought is essential for our perception of stress factors, integration of this information with other environmental and developmental cues, and mounting short- and long-term responses on the cellular level. We anticipate this Special Issue will contribute to advancing our understanding of the molecular and cellular mechanism of drought and heat responses, serving as a useful resource for the scientific community, industry, and readers interested in the development of strategies and tools for improving plant resiliency.

Dr. Andrei Smertenko
Guest Editor

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. Cells 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 2700 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.

• drought
• heat
• cells
• signaling
• responses