REVIEW article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1666852
This article is part of the Research TopicAdvanced Breeding for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Crops, Volume IIView all 23 articles
Unraveling the Signaling Pathways of Plant Cold Stress: Current Insights and Future Directions
Provisionally accepted
- 1Key Laboratory for Biology and Genetic Improvement of Oil Crops, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Oil Crops Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wuhan, China
- 2Hubei Hongshan Laboratory, wuhan, China
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Cold stress is a major abiotic stress that seriously hinders plant growth and development, ultimately affecting crop yields. During the process of evolution, plants have evolved sophisticated adaptive strategies encompassing acclimation processes and tolerance mechanisms. Over the past two decades, substantial research breakthroughs have been made in elucidating the core components and complex regulatory networks underlying cold tolerance. This review systematically synthesizes the recent progress in three fundamental aspects: cold stress perception and signal transduction pathways, downstream physiological and molecular responses, and the pivotal regulatory roles of transcription factors (particularly CBF/DREB1 family) and cold-responsive miRNAs. In addition, we also investigated the intricate crosstalk between cold response and other biological processes including photoperiod sensing, flowering regulation, circadian rhythm, phytohormone signaling, and the dedicated discussion addresses how plants achieve metabolic and developmental trade-offs when allocating resources between cold defense and other vital traits. Looking forward, we propose four promising research directions: identifying novel cryo-sensors beyond currently known receptors, post-translational modification dynamics of CBF proteins, homeostatic control mechanisms among competing regulatory factors, and translational applications of cold stress pathways in precision breeding programs. Addressing these knowledge gaps will not only deepen our understanding of plant cold adaptation at molecular level, but also facilitate the development of climate-resilient crops through molecular design breeding.
Keywords: cold stress, signaling pathway, Regulatory mechanism, Intelligent breeding, Coldresponsive gene
Received: 16 Jul 2025; Accepted: 31 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Peng, Hua and Liu. 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) or licensor 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.
* Correspondence: Jing Liu, Key Laboratory for Biology and Genetic Improvement of Oil Crops, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Oil Crops Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Wuhan, China
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