Plant Stress Memory and Physiological Plasticity

Dear Colleagues,

We would like to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue on Plant Stress Memory and Physiological Plasticity, a topic that has become increasingly relevant as plants are more frequently exposed to recurrent and overlapping environmental constraints.

Plants do not experience stress as an isolated event, but as part of a history. Drought, salinity, heat, flooding, excess light and other environmental constraints often recur, overlap and leave physiological traces that influence how subsequent challenges are perceived and managed. From this perspective, stress memory and physiological plasticity are not separate subjects, but closely connected dimensions of plant life. Memory gives continuity to experience, allowing previous exposure to shape future responses, whereas plasticity gives this continuity a living expression through changes in metabolism, signaling, growth, development and resilience.

Recent work has considerably expanded this field by showing that prior stress exposure can induce a primed state that persists through recovery and becomes evident upon re-exposure. These responses may involve molecular, biochemical, physiological and epigenetic adjustments, but their significance is ultimately revealed at the whole-plant level, where altered stability, performance and acclimation can be observed over time. This encompasses aspects related to the formation of adaptive memory (a “positive” memory), in which tolerance or resistance is increased and non-adaptive memory (a “negative” memory), characterized by greater sensitivity and reduced plant stability. Nevertheless, several fundamental questions remain open. How advantageous is it for a plant to retain a memory of prior stress? What is the energetic cost associated with memory maintenance? What is the relationship between memory and plasticity? And how is a memory event erased or forgotten? In this sense, plant stress biology increasingly calls for integrative approaches able to connect mechanisms with phenotype and short-term responses with longer-lasting effects, including transgenerational ones.

This Special Issue, Plant Stress Memory and Physiological Plasticity, welcomes original research articles, reviews and perspectives that explore how plants retain, integrate, express and reset information from past environmental experiences. We particularly encourage submissions addressing priming, acclimation, recovery dynamics, phenotypic plasticity, epigenetic and physiological memory, resilience metrics, crop performance under recurrent stress and transgenerational effects. By bringing together mechanistic, physiological and conceptual perspectives, this Issue aims to deepen current understanding of how plants endure environmental uncertainty and how such knowledge may contribute to more resilient and sustainable agriculture.

Prof. Dr. Gustavo Maia Souza
Prof. Dr. Marcelo Nogueira do Amaral
Dr. Priscila Ariane Auler
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.