Responses of Crops to Abiotic Stress and Regulatory Pathways for Stress Alleviation
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: 31 August 2026 | Viewed by 12
Special Issue Editors
Interests: plant physiological and biochemical mechanisms; plant stress and regulation; growth and development; changes in carbon and nitrogen metabolism; crop cultivation and physiology
Interests: plant physiological and biochemical mechanisms; plant stress and regulation; growth and development; changes in carbon and nitrogen metabolism; root growth and development; crop cultivation and physiology
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Under the intensifying backdrop of global climate change, abiotic stresses such as drought, high temperature, salinity, waterlogging, and nutrient deficiency have become core limiting factors affecting crop production stability, resource-use efficiency, and agricultural sustainable development. To address these challenges and enhance crop resilience and environmental adaptability in the field, it is essential to adopt an integrated perspective of the crop production system. This involves combining the field management practices of crop cultivation science, the phenotypic and functional analysis of crop physiology, and the mechanistic insights from molecular genetics, thereby forming a complete research cycle from phenomenon to mechanism and from mechanism to regulation.
This Special Issue aims to collect research centered on the "physiology–genetics–cultivation" interactive network of crop stress resilience. It will focus on the following directions:
- Physiological Phenotypes and Adaptation Mechanisms: Investigating the response patterns of key agrophysiological traits—such as carbon and nitrogen metabolism, photosynthesis, water and nutrient use, reactive oxygen species metabolism, and yield components—under stress conditions.
- Key Genetic Basis Elucidation: Clarifying the core genes, genetic variations, molecular markers, or signaling pathways (e.g., transcription factors, hormone signaling networks) that regulate the above physiological processes and stress-resilient phenotypes, providing potential targets for cultivation management.
- Innovative Agronomic Regulation Pathways: Exploring how to proactively intervene in crop physiological processes or genetic expression through optimized cultivation measures—such as water and fertilizer management, soil tillage, cropping systems, and application of exogenous substances—to effectively mitigate stress damage, enhance recovery capacity, and stabilize yield.
This Special Issue of Plants aims to collate original research articles and reviews. We welcome contributions focusing on grain crops or important economic crops, based on field trials, controlled environment experiments, or integrated multi-omics analyses. We highly encourage studies that demonstrate a coherent approach driven by cultivation needs, elucidated through physiological mechanisms, and explored via genetic targets, all contributing collectively to a solid theoretical foundation and practical technical solutions for building climate-smart crop production systems.
Dr. Yuan Chen
Guest Editor
Dr. Zhenyu Liu
Guest Editor Assistant
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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 stress
- crop cultivation
- stress resistance physiology
- genetic mechanism
- agronomic regulation
- water and fertilizer management
- stress relief
- yield stability
- sustainable agriculture
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