Impact of Abiotic Stresses on Plant-Soil Nutrient Status, Metabolism, Growth, and Ecosystem Functions

Dear Colleagues,

Water and nutrients are essential factors for sustaining plant growth. Global climatic change is predicted to alter precipitation patterns, potentially increasing the risk of extreme drought events during this century. Despite being relatively short-term events, severe droughts can cause significant and long-term ecological change and can thus have impacts disproportionate to their duration. Drought stress can depress plant metabolism, growth, development, and distribution by affecting uptake, transport, and nutrient partitioning through decreased mineralization rates and diffusion of soil nutrients to root surface. Nutrient cycling in plants and soil is a vital biological process and ecosystem function that can influence plant growth and productivity of terrestrial ecosystems. A better understanding of plants’ physiological and biochemical responses and identifying the dynamics of nutrients under drought is essential to predict drought effects on ecosystem processes. An improvement in the knowledge of the interactions in the interfaces among drought, nutrient availability, and plant responses/adaptation is needed for a better understanding of the impacts, resistance, and resilience of terrestrial ecosystems under drought. Thus, this Special Issue of Plants will highlight physiobiochemical responses of ecologically and economically important plant species, and plant–soil nutrient status under abiotic stresses, not only under drought but also salinity and temperature, which could help in designing proper management strategies for improving ecosystem functioning and productivity in the face of climate change.

Dr. Akash Tariq
Dr. Jordi Sardans
Dr. Fanjiang Zeng
Prof. Dr. Josep Peñuelas
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-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.