The Interaction of Biotic and Abiotic Stresses

Plants face complexes stresses, including exposure to simultaneous abiotic and biotic stresses. The interactions between plants, pathogens, and the surrounding environment can influence a plant’s immune response and its response to abiotic stresses. Environmental conditions like temperature extremes, water deficit and excess, as well as edaphic conditions like soil salinity and nutrient composition affect pathogen interactions with plants, increasing or decreasing pathogen infections. For example, drought stress enhances the severity of charcoal rot, crown rots and dry root rots, while dry winters suppress anthracnose and rust diseases.



Recently, several studies have shed light on the ways that plants respond when under a combination of abiotic and biotic stresses. A comprehensive understanding of the molecular mechanisms that determine a plant’s responses to concurrent abiotic and biotic cues, will be important for creating future smart crops and for promoting global food security, and is thus an emerging area of research interest.



The goal of this Research Topic is to collect papers discussing the impact of complex environmental conditions on plants, with a particular focus on the effects of abiotic stresses on pathogen infection and vice-versa. We wish to highlight investigations into the ways that the effects of an abiotic stressor can enhance or attenuate a plant’s defenses against pathogens. We welcome research articles and review papers that fill the knowledge gap in biological research into these combined stresses. The role that hormones play in these interactions will also be of interest.



Authors are invited to submit high-quality manuscripts on themes that include, but are not limited to, the following:



• The effects of abiotic stresses on foliar and root-infecting pathogens on plants;

• The effects of abiotic stresses on plant immune responses;

• Physiological, molecular and metabolic changes in a plant defenses against combined abiotic and biotic stressors;

• Key factors determining the interactions between biotic and abiotic stresses;

• The role of hormone cross-talk in response to combined abiotic and biotic stresses;

• Development of novel strategies or tools to understand the impact of combined abiotic and biotic stresses in plants.

Keywords: abiotic stress, biotic stress, plant pathogens, environmental stresses, stress response, plant hormones, phytohormones, plant immune response

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.