Perspectives on Crop Response to Abiotic Stresses: Function of Lipid Components

Abiotic stresses such as drought and salt seriously affect crop yield and quality. Different crops, as well as different varieties of the same crop, have different sensitivities to abiotic stresses. A comprehensive understanding of the differences in stress sensitivity of different crops and their varieties would provide the basis and strategy for breeding stress-tolerant varieties. Therefore, it becomes a major issue of concern whether differences in specific physiological characteristics, and components or gene expression patterns among crop varieties might contribute to their stress response.

Lipid metabolism is a key process in plant energy homeostasis, membrane structure, cell signaling, transcriptional and translational regulation, and protein interactions. The response to stress can be recorded by lipids and quickly fed back. Lipid components and abundance can be used to monitor plant changes over time and responses to specific stimuli. However, due to the diversity and complexity of lipid components, research on the extremely complex metabolic networks and functional regulation of crop lipids remain stagnant. More in-depth studies are needed to assess not only the role of specific lipid components in crop response to abiotic stress, but also to analyze the different contributions of various lipid components to stress sensitivity among crop varieties.

In this Research Topic, we welcome submissions of all article types published by Frontiers in Plant Science that explore the function of lipid components in crop abiotic stress in agriculture, especially those focusing on the following themes:
• Novel methods and techniques for the identification of lipid components in crops
• Changes in crop lipid components and abundance under abiotic stress
• Physiological functions of lipid components in crop response to abiotic stress
• Molecular regulation of lipid metabolism in crop response to abiotic stress

Keywords: lipid components, wax, cutin, fatty acid, leaf stomata, lipid synthesis, stress response, tolerance/resistance, molecular regulation

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.