Plant Functional Traits or Microbiomes Associated with Diseases, Pests, Human Activities and Climate Change

Dear Colleagues,

As Earth experiences shifts in warmer temperatures and increased aridification, understanding plant adaptations to abiotic or biotic stress by plant trait change has become imperative. Drought stress leads to increases in trait diversity, which challenges the traditional view that harsh environmental conditions reduce plant trait diversity. Otherwise, the national average rate of crop pests and diseases (CPDs) has increased four times during 1970–2016 in China; moreover, warmer nighttime temperature was the key contributor to the increasing occurrence of CPDs. Additionally, plants can recruit specific microbial taxa to adapt to harsh environments. In return, the microbiome can improve the fitness of host plants under harsh environments by activating genes related to the host plants to obtain the required nourishment. Plant functional traits including morphological, physiological, and biochemical characteristics, and are crucial in determining a plant’s response to its environment. Plant microbiomes, encompassing the rhizosphere, epiphytic, and endophytic microbiomes, have demonstrated their great potential role in agricultural systems for desired agronomic and ecological functions.

During the past decades, the importance of the response of plant functional traits or microbiomes to diseases, pests, and climate change is well represented. More attention has been paid to the utilization of beneficial microbial communities or special functional plants as sustainable approaches to disease, pest control, or climate change. However, research on plant functional traits or microbiomes associated with plant diseases, pests, or climate change, and the exploration of their roles in the process of being endangered, remains rare. Thus, this topic will be launched to explore the recent advances revealing the responses of the taxonomy of pathogens or pests, microbiomes, and plants’ morphological, physiological, and biochemical characteristics to biotic or abiotic stress. This will help us to better understand the strategies employed by plants to adapt to warmer temperatures, increased aridification, diseases, or pests, and their significance in informing conservation and sustainable land management practices.

Aim and scope

This research topic welcomes contributions from global researchers to unravel the mysteries of plant adaptation to warmer temperatures, increased aridification, diseases, or pests. We encourage original research articles, reviews, and perspective papers that cover a wide range of themes, including, but not limited to:

• Multiple pathogens associated with plant diseases.
• Plant height, stem diameter, leaf length and width, leaf vein density, branches, biomass allocation, reproductive allocation, and their intricate scaling relationships as an adaptive trait in response to diseases, pests, and climate change.
• Genes, secondary metabolites, nutrient stoichiometric characteristics, biological enzymes, and other physiological and biochemical characteristics used in response to diseases, pests, and climate change.
• The taxonomy, composition, and variation in microbial communities associated with ecological processes and their assembly in plant disease, pest development, and climate change.
• Recent advances in the measurement and modeling of plant functional traits related to diseases, pests, warmer temperatures, and increased aridification.

Dr. Jianwei Guo
Dr. Honglan Yang
Dr. Xiaolin Wang
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.

• biomass allocation
• reproductive allocation
• physiological and biochemical characteristics
• microbiomes
• warmer temperatures
• increased aridification
• fitness