BMC Plant Biology highlights contributions to the Collection Abiotic stress tolerance in plants. In the natural environment, plants deal with a range of abiotic stresses, linked for instance to changes in light, temperature, (micro/macro) nutrient concentration, drought and salinity. Since abiotic factors can be superimposed on each other, and largely variable in terms of magnitude and frequency of change, coping with abiotic stress represents a major challenge and limiting factor for crop productivity and sustainability. As abiotic stresses can severely affect plant fitness, plants have evolved sophisticated, interconnected mechanisms to efficiently respond to abiotic cues, and regulate growth, development and yield.
However, tolerance against abiotic stress is a complex process, where the underlying mechanisms and their regulation remain often poorly understood. Revealing the mechanisms by which plants sense and cope with abiotic stress, can affect how we understand, and potentially optimize, relevant processes like crop yield, abiotic stress response, resilience and signaling, photosynthesis regulation, cellular metabolism, nutrient homeostasis and uptake, gene expression in response to stress.
While understanding how plants respond to and tolerate abiotic stresses has fundamental relevance, it could also be utilized to develop novel multi-disciplinary approaches for enhancing crop yield and quality, protecting terrestrial ecosystems and biodiversity, and implementing sustainable agricultural practices in the current climate change scenario. In support of UN Sustainable Development Goals ‘Zero Hunger’ (SDG 2) and ‘Life on Land’ (SDG 15), the Editors of BMC Plant Biology launched a Collection on ‘Abiotic stress tolerance in plants’. This collection brings together original research articles that cover the emerging developments in plant biology, biochemistry, structural biology, molecular biology, and genetics applied to plant abiotic stress research. We present research in the field that explored, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Mechanisms of plant response to abiotic stress
- Physiological, biochemical and molecular responses of plants to abiotic stress or multiple abiotic stress conditions, under different growth conditions and developmental stages
- Abiotic stress signaling and signal transduction mechanisms in plants
- Plant genetic and phenotypic diversity in abiotic stress tolerance/resilience
- Exploring the natural resilience to abiotic stress in diverse germplasms
- Mechanisms and regulation of plant response to combined abiotic stresses
- Photosynthesis regulation and light-harvesting regulation
- Response and resilience to drought stress and salinity
- Macro/micro-nutrient homeostasis and uptake
- Heavy metal toxicity
- Molecular breeding for abiotic stress tolerance in plants
- Identification, expression, and functional validation of stress-related genes and transcription factors
- Epigenetic mechanisms and regulation in plant abiotic stress response and tolerance
- Symbiotic interactions to increase abiotic stress tolerance in plants
- Biostimulants and natural products to increase abiotic stress tolerance in plants
- Multi-Omics and genome editing technologies, and systems biology approaches for plant/crop abiotic stress resilience
- Genetic engineering and biotechnological applications to enhance abiotic stress tolerance in plants
Image credit: Isabel B. Meyer / stock.adobe.com
