Impacts of Climate Change on Quality Attributes and Nutritional Value of Fruits and Vegetables
A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Response to Abiotic Stress and Climate Change".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 October 2025 | Viewed by 525
Special Issue Editors
Interests: antioxidant capacities; bioenergetic; biotechnology; fruit ripening biology; plant physiology; photosynthesis; vegetable and fruit quality characteristics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: plant physiology; abiotic stress; secondary metabolism; oxidative stress; reactive oxygen species; antioxidant defense system
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues of the 21st century, with several implications for both human life and the environment. Extreme environments present various stressors for plants, including extreme levels of radiation, water availability (drought, floods, and submersion), salinity, temperatures (heat, cold, freezing), chemical factors (metals and pH), and combinations of these factors. Climate change affects abiotic stress and results in the production of ROS in susceptible plants. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are crucial factors that play an important role in plants as they contribute to the growth, development, and metabolic activity pathways; they act as an alarm mechanism, triggering cellular responses to harmful stimuli as well. However, excess ROS cause oxidative stress-related damage and oxidize organic substances, leading to cellular malfunctions.
Agriculture is one of the sectors most affected by climate change, and it is crucial for the global economy and food security. Fruit and vegetable crops, which play a key role in the global food system, can be deeply affected by climate fluctuations, with serious consequences for plants. This, in turn, alters ecosystems worldwide, including agricultural production systems, and challenges researchers to design adaptation strategies.
This Special Issue aims to explore new insights into the understanding of these effects under different conditions, such as the effects of sustainable, low-input, and climate change-stressed environments on the yield, quality, and nutritional value of fruit and vegetable products. Resilience mechanisms (adaptability and resistance) induced during pre- and post-harvest handling will also be considered. Any paper dealing with new insights and future directions of fruit and vegetable acclimation to climate change will be considered.
Dr. Georgia Ouzounidou
Dr. Anastasia E. Giannakoula
Dr. Ilias Avdikos
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 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. Plants 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.
Keywords
- abiotic and biotic stress
- fruit and leafy vegetable quality
- nutritional value
- secondary metabolites
- plant stress physiology
- plant structure and function
- oxidative stress
- reactive oxygen species
- antioxidant system
- omics approaches (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc.)
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