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Plants
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Plant Stress Physiology and Ecophysiology: Mechanisms, Responses, and Environmental Adaptation
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Plant Stress Physiology and Ecophysiology: Mechanisms, Responses, and Environmental Adaptation

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Physiology and Metabolism".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 February 2026) | Viewed by 4392

Editors

Dr. Jing An

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Key Laboratory of Pollution Ecology and Environmental Engineering, Institute of Applied Ecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China
Interests: pollution ecological process; phytoremediation; emerging contaminants; pollution ecotoxicology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Zhouli Liu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Life Science and Engineering, Shenyang University, Shenyang 110044, China
Interests: plant physiological ecology; tree ecology; phytoremediation; environmental chemistry

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change is altering plant–environment interactions in terrestrial ecosystems, exacerbating abiotic stressors such as drought, salinity, and extreme temperatures. Plants employ sophisticated physiological, molecular, and ecological strategies to acclimate to these challenges, balancing immediate survival with adaptive evolution. Deciphering these mechanisms is essential for advancing sustainable agricultural practices and ecosystem resilience.

Emerging tools, including omics technologies, CRISPR-based gene editing, and systems biology, have advanced our understanding of stress perception, signaling pathways, and adaptive traits. Parallel ecophysiological research demonstrates how plants optimize resource allocation, photosynthetic efficiency, and microbial symbioses to adapt to resource scarcity or environmental contamination.

This Special Issue highlights cutting-edge research on plant stress responses, focusing on their role in mitigating climate impacts and improving productivity under environmental constraints. We welcome original research, reviews, and perspectives addressing stress priming, phenotypic plasticity, and multidisciplinary data integration to advance climate-resilient solutions.

Dr. Jing An
Dr. Zhouli Liu
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 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-anonymized 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

  • stress physiology
  • ecophysiology
  • adaptation
  • ecology

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 3504 KB  
Article
Grazing-Induced Conservative Shift in Water-Use Strategies of Desert Plants: Trait Syndromes from Hydraulic Efficiency to Storage Safety
by Jiatong Wu, Yiwei Tang, Chengzhen Jia, Zhiyong Li, Huamin Liu, Lixin Wang, Yang Wang, Lei Dong, Cunzhu Liang and Jinghui Zhang
Plants 2026, 15(10), 1487; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants15101487 - 13 May 2026
Viewed by 922
Abstract
Grazing is a pervasive disturbance in arid ecosystems, but its effects on community-level coordination of plant hydraulic and economic traits remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated how long-term grazing alters community-weighted mean hydraulic and leaf economic traits in a desert steppe of Inner [...] Read more.
Grazing is a pervasive disturbance in arid ecosystems, but its effects on community-level coordination of plant hydraulic and economic traits remain poorly understood. Here, we investigated how long-term grazing alters community-weighted mean hydraulic and leaf economic traits in a desert steppe of Inner Mongolia, and how these shifts affect aboveground biomass (AGB) and water-use efficiency (WUE). Grazing drove a coordinated conservative shift in community hydraulic traits, including more negative osmotic potential at turgor loss point (ψtlp), increased cell wall rigidity (ε), and reduced leaf hydraulic conductance (Kleaf). Grazing also restructured trait–function relationships: under grazing, AGB was positively correlated with dehydration tolerance rather than transport efficiency, and WUE was tightly coupled with osmotic adjustment. Variance partitioning showed that hydraulic traits explained 57.4% of AGB variation under grazing, whereas economic traits dominated in the control site (74.5%). Our findings demonstrate that long-term grazing imposes a fundamental reorganization of community-level trait coordination, driving a transition from an efficiency-oriented to a safety-oriented strategy, and highlight the central role of hydraulic traits in mediating ecosystem function under combined stress. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Stress Physiology and Ecophysiology: Mechanisms, Responses, and Environmental Adaptation)
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23 pages, 5672 KB  
Article
Spatial Optimization of Electrophysiological Signal Acquisition in Clivia Leaves Under a Controlled Leaf-Surface Salt-Treatment Model
by Ji Qi, Yuchao Yang, Yicheng Wang, Haoran Wang, Qiuping Wang, Yan Shi, Yanwei Wang and Hong Men
Plants 2026, 15(9), 1363; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants15091363 - 29 Apr 2026
Viewed by 568
Abstract
Plant electrophysiological signals can rapidly reflect the dynamic responses of plants to external stimuli, giving them strong potential for nondestructive monitoring and early state recognition. However, differences among plant organs, as well as spatial heterogeneity within the same organ, may substantially affect signal [...] Read more.
Plant electrophysiological signals can rapidly reflect the dynamic responses of plants to external stimuli, giving them strong potential for nondestructive monitoring and early state recognition. However, differences among plant organs, as well as spatial heterogeneity within the same organ, may substantially affect signal quality and stability because of variations in tissue structure and local physiological activity. To address this issue, this study used Clivia as an experimental model and established a controlled local leaf-surface salt-treatment paradigm to systematically evaluate the relative discriminative ability of electrophysiological signals recorded from different spatial positions on leaves. First, stepwise screening of longitudinal leaf regions and leaf hierarchy was performed using 0 mM and 100 mM NaCl agarose gel treatments to determine the optimal signal acquisition position. Then, based on the selected position, a five-level NaCl treatment recognition task was constructed, and LRPNet, a residual network integrating PoolFormer and an efficient channel attention mechanism, was proposed for multi-gradient classification of plant electrophysiological signals. The results showed that, within the current experimental framework, the basal region of the top leaf exhibited the highest relative separability and the best overall recognition performance. In the five-gradient recognition task, LRPNet achieved the highest mean Accuracy of 92.21% among the compared models. These findings indicated that plant electrophysiological signals exhibited pronounced spatial heterogeneity and that optimization of the recording location was not merely an experimental detail, but an important upstream factor that affected downstream recognition performance. This study provides a methodological basis for optimizing signal acquisition positions and improving electrophysiological signal recognition in plants. However, the present conclusions are mainly applicable to the controlled local salt-treatment paradigm established in this study and still require further validation through more rigorous physiological verification, cross-scenario testing, and more independent data-partitioning strategies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Stress Physiology and Ecophysiology: Mechanisms, Responses, and Environmental Adaptation)
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18 pages, 5381 KB  
Article
Diversity of Root System Architecture in Mediterranean Maize Inbred Lines Provides New Breeding Opportunities to Improve Stress Resilience and Resource Efficiency
by Rongli Shi, Dominic Knoch, Ana López-Malvar, Narendra Narisetti, Evgeny Gladilin and Thomas Altmann
Plants 2026, 15(6), 935; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants15060935 - 18 Mar 2026
Viewed by 714
Abstract
A detailed characterization of root system architecture (RSA) and growth dynamics is key to develop stress-resilient maize varieties. We evaluated sixty-five Mediterranean maize inbred lines using automated high-throughput phenotyping under controlled conditions. Shoot and root traits were extracted from imaging data during early [...] Read more.
A detailed characterization of root system architecture (RSA) and growth dynamics is key to develop stress-resilient maize varieties. We evaluated sixty-five Mediterranean maize inbred lines using automated high-throughput phenotyping under controlled conditions. Shoot and root traits were extracted from imaging data during early vegetative development, revealing significant genotype-specific variation in root biomass-related traits (total root length, total root volume), root architecture (root angle, root system depth, root system width), and relative growth rates. Notably, lines previously classified as heat and drought stress-resilient or stress-sensitive based on above-ground development did not group according to particular root traits, indicating that multiple strategies may underlie tolerance to combined stress. We identified lines with contrasting RSA, including deeper roots, shallower roots, or overall larger root systems, that offer new opportunities for resilience breeding. Our results underscore root traits as critical yet underexploited targets for improving stress resilience and resource efficiency. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Stress Physiology and Ecophysiology: Mechanisms, Responses, and Environmental Adaptation)
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14 pages, 943 KB  
Article
Morphophysiological Responses of Two Riparian Species Exposed to Water Restriction and Light Protection Conditions
by Karen Peña-Rojas, Sergio Donoso, Patricio Valenzuela-Celis, Miguel Quintanilla, Alejandro Riquelme, Claudia Espinoza, Rodrigo Gangas, Cristian Araya-Boza and Carolain Badaracco
Plants 2026, 15(2), 259; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants15020259 - 14 Jan 2026
Viewed by 1520
Abstract
Climate change has intensified summer drought and high solar radiation in Mediterranean ecosystems, generating abiotic stress that limits the establishment of riparian species. We conducted a nursery experiment to evaluate the effects of two levels of water availability and light intensity on the [...] Read more.
Climate change has intensified summer drought and high solar radiation in Mediterranean ecosystems, generating abiotic stress that limits the establishment of riparian species. We conducted a nursery experiment to evaluate the effects of two levels of water availability and light intensity on the growth and physiological responses of two native riparian species from Mediterranean Chile: Drimys winteri and Persea lingue. A bi-factorial design combined two irrigation treatments (well-watered and water restriction) and two light intensity levels manipulated through a light protection treatment (20% shade mesh and full light exposure). Water restriction was applied gradually until 15–20% (v/v) substrate moisture, defined as maximum water restriction, followed by rehydration. Morphological variables (height, root collar diameter, and shoot-to-root ratio) and physiological traits (predawn water potential, chlorophyll fluorescence, and electron transport rate) were measured. Growth responses were affected by the light protection treatment, which promoted a significant height growth in both species. Water stress affected the global response of both species but they differed in their post-stress hydraulic recovery: P. lingue fully recovered its predawn water potential, whereas Drimys winteri did not. Our study provides measurable and quantifiable values that demonstrate the sensitivity of these species to water stress. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Plant Stress Physiology and Ecophysiology: Mechanisms, Responses, and Environmental Adaptation)
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