Innovative Strategies for Enhancing Stress Resistance in Horticultural Crops Under Changing Climate Conditions

Horticultural crops, including fruits, vegetables, ornamentals, medicinal plants etc., are highly sensitive to environmental stresses such as drought, salinity, extreme temperatures, and pathogen attacks. Since climate change intensifies the frequency and severity of these stress factors, enhancing stress resistance in horticultural crops has become a critical area of research. Recent advances in molecular biology, biotechnological tools, genomic approaches, and precision agriculture offer promising tools to improve crop resilience and productivity. Integrating these innovative strategies with conventional breeding and sustainable agronomic practices presents a transformative opportunity to secure food and nutritional security under changing climate conditions.

The current Research Topic aims to address the challenges of improving stress tolerance in horticultural crops in the face of climate variability. Climate change has disrupted traditional growing patterns and intensified abiotic and biotic stresses, leading to yield instability and reduced crop quality. The goal is to explore and highlight innovative strategies – ranging from gene editing and stress-responsive gene discovery to microbiome engineering, omics approaches, and smart agronomic practices – that can enhance the adaptability and resilience of horticultural crops. By combining recent findings and fostering interdisciplinary approaches, this Research Topic seeks to provide a platform for developing strong, climate-resilient horticulture systems.

We invite original research, reviews, and methods papers that address the development of stress-resistant horticultural crops. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: physiological and molecular mechanisms of stress tolerance; CRISPR/Cas and other gene editing tools; transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic profiling; beneficial plant – microbe interactions; breeding and phenotyping strategies; and sustainable soil and water management practices. Manuscripts should present novel findings with clear implications for improving horticultural crop resistant under current climate conditions.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Case Report
• Classification
• Clinical Trial
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: Horticultural crops, abiotic stress, climate change, stress resistance, gene editing, plant - microbe interaction, sustainable agriculture, molecular breeding, photosynthetic mechanism

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.