Plant Stress Responses: Host–Microbe Interactions, Reactive Oxygen Species Signaling, the Role of Phytohormones, and Disease Control

Dear Colleagues,

Plants are constantly challenged by various abiotic and biotic stresses in their natural environment, which reduces and limits the productivity of agricultural crops. Abiotic stress causes the loss of major crop plants worldwide and includes radiation, salinity, floods, drought, extremes in temperature, heavy metals, etc. On the other hand, attacks by various pathogens such as fungi, bacteria, oomycetes, nematodes, and herbivores are included in biotic stresses. Plants do not have the ability to escape from these environmental cues, so they have evolved sophisticated defense mechanisms to recognize and fight these biotic and abiotic stresses instead. A crucial step in plant defense is the timely perception of stress in order to respond in a rapid and efficient manner. After recognition, plants’ constitutive basal defense mechanisms lead to an activation of complex signaling cascades of defense, varying from one stress to another. Following exposure to abiotic and/or biotic stress, specific ion channels and kinase cascades are activated, reactive oxygen species (ROS), phytohormones such as abscisic acid (ABA), salicylic acid (SA), jasmonic acid (JA), and ethylene (ET) accumulate, and a reprogramming of the genetic machinery results in adequate defense reactions and an increase in plant tolerance to minimize the biological damage caused by stress.

In this exciting context, Agronomy is launching a Special Issue devoted to ‘Plant Stress Responses: Host–Microbe Interactions, Reactive Oxygen Species Signaling, the Role of Phytohormones, and Disease Control’. Both original research and review articles are welcome. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Physiological, metabolic, and molecular responses of plants to abiotic and biotic stresses;
• Identification of novel players involved in plant responses to stress conditions;
• Identification of biotechnological strategies to increase plant tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses;
• Understanding molecular interactions and crosstalk among different stress conditions.

Dr. Min Gao
Guest Editor

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• abiotic stresses
• biotic stresses
• resistance
• ROS
• phytohormone
• host–pathogen interactions
• molecular breeding