Activation and Suppression of Plant Immunity

Dear Colleagues,

Plants are constantly challenged by a wide variety of microorganisms and pests in their environment. To cope with these threats, they rely on a highly dynamic immune system that enables them to recognize invading organisms and activate effective defense responses. At the same time, successful pathogens have evolved sophisticated strategies to interfere with or suppress these immune mechanisms, allowing them to colonize plant tissues.

Over the past decade, significant advances in molecular biology, genomics, and systems-level approaches have greatly improved our understanding of plant immune regulation. Despite this progress, many aspects of how immune activation and suppression are balanced in different biological contexts remain unclear.

Addressing these questions is essential for advancing basic plant science and for developing sustainable strategies to enhance crop resistance.

This Special Issue on “Activation and Suppression of Plant Immunity” aims to gather cutting-edge research and comprehensive reviews that deepen our understanding of how plants defend themselves and how these defense mechanisms can be regulated or exploited. This Special Issue aligns with the journal’s scope on plant physiology, microbial interactions, and biotechnology by integrating fundamental discoveries with translational approaches for crop improvement.

We invite contributions that clarify how immune responses are initiated, regulated, or suppressed and how these processes affect plant–microbe relationships in both pathogenic and beneficial contexts. Emphasis is placed on studies combining molecular biology, omics, and integrative systems approaches, as well as applied perspectives that bridge laboratory findings with field-level outcomes.

We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, which aims to provide a platform for sharing new findings and perspectives in this rapidly developing field, which include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Mechanisms of pattern-triggered and effector-triggered immunity (PTI and ETI);
• Molecular strategies used by pathogens and pests to suppress plant immunity;
• Hormonal regulation and signaling crosstalk in plant defense;
• Beneficial microbes, immune priming, and induced resistance;
• Omics-based and systems biology approaches to plant immunity;
• Applications of immune knowledge for improving crop resistance.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Loredana Maria Scalschi
Dr. Eugenio Llorens
Dr. Ana Isabel González-Hernández
Guest Editors

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