Plant Stress Physiology and Ecophysiological Responses to Environmental Challenges

Dear Colleagues,

In today’s changing world, plant sciences play a vital role, especially in the context of global food security. Agriculture forms the foundation of human society by supplying the food essential for survival. However, climate change, global warming, and other environmental threats increasingly jeopardize crop yield and quality. Plant stress physiology focuses on how plants detect, respond to, and adapt to unfavorable environmental conditions that impair their growth and development.

Plant stress can be categorized as abiotic or biotic. Abiotic stressors include drought, temperature extremes, salinity, nutrient imbalances, heavy metals, and pollution, while biotic stressors include pathogens, herbivores, and parasitic organisms. These stressors may result from both natural and human-induced environmental changes, significantly affecting plant ecophysiology.

Plants have developed complex strategies to cope with stress, including osmotic adjustment, changes in stomatal behavior, activation of antioxidant systems, and the production of hormones and stress-related proteins. These forms of adaptation help them maintain physiological balance and minimize damage.

Plants’ responses vary depending on plant genotype, developmental stage, and prior stress exposure. Understanding these mechanisms is key to predicting plant performance under variable environmental conditions. In agriculture, applying this knowledge helps improve crop resilience through stress-tolerant breeding, optimized resource use, and integrated management practices—critical steps for maintaining productivity in the face of climate uncertainty.

This Special Issue invites original research articles, reviews, and short communications that explore plant responses to environmental stressors from a physiological and ecophysiological standpoint. While the focus is on crop species, studies involving model or wild plants that contribute to our understanding of stress responses are equally welcome. We particularly encourage multidisciplinary approaches that integrate molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry, and systems biology with classical and modern plant physiology.

Dr. Brigitta Tóth
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. 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.

• adaptation
• antioxidant enzymes
• cellular damage
• crop production
• crop protection
• crops
• free radicals
• oxidative damage