Research on the Interactions Between Plants and the Environment: Mechanisms, Adaptations, and Sustainable Perspective
A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Agriculture".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2026 | Viewed by 4
Special Issue Editors
Interests: plant stress physiology; smart nanotechnology to abiotic stress; omics approaches in plant stress biology; biostimulant efficacy in mitigating abiotic stresses; sustainable agriculture
Interests: metabolomic and phytochemical profiling of plants under biotic and abiotic stress conditions; chemical fingerprinting for tracing plant–environment interactions; sustainable agriculture through biostimulant application
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: environmental science; environmental pollutants; plant–soil interaction; plant stress physiology; omics approaches in plant abiotic stress; biostimulant efficacy in mitigating abiotic stresses; sustainable agriculture
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: omics approaches to uncover plant molecular mechanisms modulated by biostimulants; plant gene expression and regulation under abiotic stress; organic amendments for sustainable agriculture
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Plants stand at the centre of Earth’s life-support systems and are the first responders to environmental change. Today’s challenges, accelerating climate change, air and water pollution, desertification and drought, and exposure to hazardous chemicals, are reshaping plant functioning across all biological scales, from molecules to ecosystems. These pressures also cascade through agri-food systems, biodiversity, and human development, raising urgent questions about how plant–environment interactions can be understood, predicted, and harnessed for adaptation, mitigation, and restoration.
This Special Issue invites contributions that move beyond isolated case studies toward integrative, decision-relevant science. We welcome original research articles, short communications, and reviews that link mechanism to outcome across scales, molecular signalling, physiology, and plant–microbe interactions through to field performance and ecosystem processes.
Submissions may focus on natural or managed systems and are encouraged to combine experimental evidence with advanced analytical approaches such as multi-omics, remote sensing, process-based or data-driven modelling, and synthesis or meta-analysis. Nature-based strategies, including the use of biostimulants, phytoremediation, trait-based breeding and phenotyping, and microbiome engineering, are particularly encouraged when evaluated using robust experimental designs and transparent performance metrics.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Plant responses to heat, drought, salinity, and compound stresses under current and projected climate scenarios;
- Air and water pollutant exposure, soil contamination, and hazardous chemicals: plant uptake, translocation, detoxification, and remediation;
- Biostimulants and other nature-based inputs: mechanisms, efficacy, and context dependency;
- Plant–microbe and plant–soil feedbacks influencing stress tolerance;
- Cross-scale indicators and modelling of resilience, yield stability, resource-use efficiency, carbon and water cycles, and ecosystem services;
- Frameworks translating mechanistic insights into actionable strategies for adaptation, mitigation, and landscape restoration.
Dr. Hajar Salehi
Prof. Dr. Luigi Lucini
Dr. Leilei Zhang
Dr. Sonia Monterisi
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. Sustainability 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 2400 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
- climate change adaptation
- abiotic stresses
- plant–microbe interactions
- omics-based stress mechanisms
- phytoremediation
- ecosystem resilience
- biostimulants
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