Microbe-Plant-Environment Interactions over Time

Dear Colleagues,

Crops produce optimally when seasonal homeostasis, as determined by the root-to-shoot ratio, is maintained through empirically based management strategies. Increasing pathogenic microbial pressures and environmental risks—as the devastating effects of climate change continue to unfold—threaten the seasonal homeostasis of certain crops, and thus, their productivity. Various plants have resilience capabilities to resist various factors that lead them to function outside of their seasonal homeostasis. However, such resistance factors can be counteracted by certain pathogenic microbes (bacteria, fungi, nematodes, viruses, and mycoplasms), which, alone, are not historically highly virulent, though their virulence is presently aggravated by environmental extremes, increasingly ushered in by climate change. Microbe–plant–environment interaction results in multiple effects over time that eventually express themselves through imbalances in seasonal homeostasis, and thus, a reduction in plant growth and yield. The success of maintaining any crop within its optimum seasonal homeostasis through empirically based management strategies depends on the appropriateness of the mechanisms involved in microbe–plant–environment interaction over time, in the context of disease triangle principles. Thus, this Special Issue, titled "Microbe–Plant–Environment Interactions Over Time”, aims to present recent research on any aspect of interaction involved in the microbe, plant, and environment selection in the context of devising management strategies that promote the optimum seasonal homeostasis in crops.

Some of relevant focal points include, but are not limited to, the following:

1. Theories related to the resilience capabilities of the select crop as assessed over time;
2. Environmental pressures that aggravate the virulence of the select microbe as assessed over time;
3. Management implications to promote optimum seasonal homeostasis of the select crop;
4. Future research perspectives.

Prof. Dr. Phatu Mashela
Guest Editor

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• microbe–plant–environment interaction
• crops
• plant pathogen