Year: 2026
Type: editorial
Abstract: Plants are subject to Darwinian selection and can adjust genetically or phenotypically to their environment to maximize fitness. Over the past century, a wealth of concepts and hypotheses have been proposed and tested on various aspects of plant resilience, adaptation, and acclimation to environmental changes. These efforts have applied experimental, modeling, meta-analysis and/or other approaches to characterize the numerous processes and mechanisms that plants have developed in response to environmental change. This includes modifications of key plant functions, structures, and/or morphologies to fit into the environmental changes along the soil-plant-atmosphere continuum, including canopy water use, stomatal behavior, photosynthetic capacity, root nitrogen uptake, and phenology, across molecular, cellular, organ, whole-plant, and ecosystem scales. Studying plant responses to changing environmental factors and investigating the general trends of response variation among genotypes, species, and functional types have always been a major focus in plant sciences. In recent years, our knowledge in this area has dramatically improved with the introduction of innovative techniques and technologies. This research topic attracted 20 submissions from researchers worldwide and published 10 of them. On the organ and whole-plant scale, Zhou et al. ( 2025) highlighted a decoupling relationship between multi-trait morphological modifications and foliar ion accumulation under prolonged salinity stress. The study highlighted the intraspecific differential resource investment strategies, reflected by the hybrid-specific salinity-response coordination among leaf and fineroot acquisitive traits. Duan et al. (2025) investigated the impacts of seedling cultivation and transplanting methods on rice submergence tolerance. The study uncovered that seedling cultivation and transplanting methods affect submergence tolerance by regulating stressindicating morphological and biochemical traits.On the provincial scale, Jiao et al. ( 2025) utilized a machine learning approach to map vegetation stability across Jiangsu Province. The study revealed that identified background solar radiation and its temporal variability as the dominant drivers of vegetation stability, followed by vapor pressure deficit. These findings highlight the key roles of radiation and moisture in regulating vegetation stability.We hope that 10 articles published in this Research Topic will provide the readers with up-todate content and insights. However, we note that the observations in most articles were lab or glasshouse based. Further studies conducted in field or commercial farms, with multiple environmental factors, in the longer temporal scales, and on the interactions between abiotic and biotic stresses, would be worth investigating. Topics such as leveraging stress to improve crop performance would also be interesting.
Source: Frontiers in Plant Science
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,801
OpenAlex ID: W7220739977