Abiotic Stress Influences on Plant-Associated Microbial Communities: Molecular Genetic and Metabolic Responses

Dear Colleagues,

Abiotic stresses, including droughts, global warming and soil pollution, constitute key limiting factors in forest productivity. Plant-associated microorganisms can enhance plant resistance to unfavorable environmental conditions, such as boosting plant response through the production of growth-promoting molecules, triggering the activation of specific metabolic pathways and metabolizing hazardous molecules. The continuous aggravation of the global climatic scenario has raised concerns surrounding worldwide ecosystem functionality alterations and biodiversity loss; it is, therefore, a priority to deepen the knowledge regarding the role of plant–microbe relations in the abiotic stress resistance of forest ecosystems. The increasing accessibility of multiomics techniques offers the possibility to accumulate data at an unprecedented pace and precision. However, a stronger integration of plant-associated microbiome data accompanied by plant physiological and biochemical processes, as well as soil biogeochemical cycles, is needed to increase our understanding of cross-species interactions in complex ecosystems. This Special Issue aims to collect research and review papers offering information concerning molecular genetics and metabolic responses of forest tree species-associated microbiomes under abiotic stress. This includes articles on, but not limited to, plant–microbe interactions under extreme climatic events or environmental pollution, endophytic community composition and functional diversity in the soil–plant–atmosphere continuum, its role in abiotic stress mitigation, the effect of microbiome engineering on plant resistance, associations between microbial strains and plant defense mechanisms.

Dr. Giovanni Emiliani
Dr. Silvia Traversari
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. Forests is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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.

• bacteria
• endophytes
• genomics
• microbiome
• plant resilience