Editorial: Physiological, molecular and genetic perspectives of environmental stress response in plants

COPYRIGHT © 2023 Vennapusa, Nimmakayala, Zaman-Allah and Ratnakumar. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. TYPE Editorial PUBLISHED 16 June 2023 DOI 10.3389/fpls.2023.1213762


Editorial on the Research Topic
Physiological, molecular and genetic perspectives of environmental stress response in plants Rapid changes in environmental conditions due to climate change affect agricultural crop production worldwide and create unprecedented challenges. Despite new developments in plant science research and technology, achieving a decent yield under changing environmental conditions continues to be a great challenge (Ehrhardt and Frommer, 2012;Fuglie, 2021). Moreover, modern agriculture has to deal with future climate change and must meet the demands of a rapidly increasing population and food security. With the complexity of different environmental stresses caused by climate change, there is a need for the scientific community to deploy new approaches for understanding the ecological consequences, effect on physiological and agronomic traits, and to uncover the tolerant mechanisms, and identify the candidate targets for crop improvement programs (Yuan et al., 2019;Pascual et al., 2022;Zandalinas and Mittler, 2022;Garg et al., 2023). Understanding the physiological, molecular, and genetic perspectives of environmental stress responses in plants is crucial to cope with the hostile effects of climate change in the present and future scenarios in agriculture. This Research Topic aims to offer the opportunity to plant scientists worldwide to present past and emerging insights related to environmental stresses and crop improvement. Various contributions were received and those published are summarized as follows.
A total of 14 articles were published, of which four dealt with experiments related to moisture stress, three were related to temperature stress and two studies focused on the combined stresses. The remaining three articles were focused on salt stress and two articles were on cadmium stress. , from horsegram (Macrotyloma uniflorum) was shown to improve water conservation, water mining, and cellular level tolerance traits in groundnut, thus helping to sustain its plant morphophysiological and biochemical functions under water-limited conditions and providing a viable option to maintain the yield penalty. Chilakala et al. investigated the influence of drought and high temperature on the incidence and severity of dry root rot disease (caused by Macrophomina phaseolina) in chickpeas under extensive on-and off-season field trials and greenhouse conditions. Notably, the water relation studies in this Research Topic are unique, connecting plants' drought physiology and pathogen-induced physiological state with multiple pieces of evidence from field, greenhouse, and lab studies. The large-scale study by Tan et al. on perennial small tree grapevine species revealed that the combined effect of both heat and drought stresses is more severe compared to the individual stresses. Integrating physiological, transcriptome, and gene network analysis helped to identify candidate genes, complex pathways, and mechanisms involved in combined stresses. This article generated valuable transcriptomic datasets for grapevines and helpful resources for future research and breeding programs.
Persaud et al. evaluated carinata (Brassica carinata A. Braun) genotypes under low and high temperatures. The assessed physiological traits and the superior tolerant lines identified in this study are viable resources for plant breeders to develop cultivars that are adaptable to different climatic zones. In rice, Stephen et al. identified potential simple sequence repeat marker (SSR) candidates linked to heat tolerance using bulked segregant analysis (BSA) in the F 2 population of NERICA-L 44 × Uma. The study by Xu et al. reported the effect of heat stress on the early booting stage and assessed the reproductive, developmental, physiological, and yield parameters. The tolerant lines and the traits identified can be used to understand mechanisms involved in tolerance and for developing heat-tolerant wheat pre-breeding lines.
Ren et al. adopted a multi-omics approach to study molecular responses in sorghum under salt stress. The comparative analysis of transcriptomics, metabolomics, and proteomics aided in identifying the key mechanisms, pathways, genes, proteins, and metabolites responsible for stress tolerance. The novelty of this study is that integrating physiological data with multi-omics analysis provided a precise tool for identifying the molecular mechanisms and key traits to improve salt stress tolerance in sorghum. The study by Kumar et al. focused on deciphering trait-associated physiological alterations under salt stress conditions using pearl millet hybrids and inbred lines. The meticulous stress imposition methods and trait modeling approach helped to identify the crucial morpho-physiological characteristics governing the tolerance mechanisms and grain yield traits under irrigation-induced salinity stress. The identified pearl millet lines can be recommended for enhancing crop resilience to achieve stable production in saline agroecosystems. Ran et al. assessed the salt tolerance of Salix matsudana Koidz, which is a climate-resilient tree species. The study reveals the relationship between ion (Na, K, Ca) absorption and photosynthetic response under salt stress.
Yuan et al. reported the global metabolomic profiling of the edible and medicinal plant Salvia miltiorrhiza under cadmium (Cd) stress. The identified target metabolites in this study will be a potential source for improving heavy metal stress tolerance in medicinally important crop plants. The review article by Al-Khayri et al. discusses the Cd source, mobility, and toxicity in medicinal plant species and their effect on germination, plant growth, physiological and biochemical characteristics, and molecular aspects, with a focus on the biosynthesis of important secondary metabolites. Further, this review discusses multiple omics and biotechnological approaches, such as genetic engineering and genome editing to ameliorate Cd stress.
The broad range of articles published under this Research Topic offer the opportunity to extend our understanding of the physiological, molecular, and genetic responses of plants to multiple environmental stresses and their interactions. The reported recent advances in scientific approaches, research ideas, and cutting-edge tools will help to better understand how multiple environmental stresses affect crops and identify the best avenues for developing crops with improved climate resilience.

Author contributions
PR organized the Research Topic together with AV, PN, and MZ-A. AV and PN wrote the first draft of the editorial, and all coauthors edited the final version.

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