Global food demand continues to rise, and achieving food security is becoming increasingly challenging under accelerating global warming. As drought, heat waves, high-temperature episodes, and floods intensify, mono-cropping confronts greater risks of yield loss. Intercropping can alleviate these risks by increasing plant diversity and enhancing its environmental resilience. However, the extent to which intercropping fulfils this potential depends on strategic decisions regarding plant combinations and field management practices that affect the responses of key functional traits plasticity and physiological processes, to improve plant adaptability, enhance resource-use efficiency, and land productivity.
The strategies that plant adaptation to environmental stress includes: (i) stress avoidance, exemplified by preferential carbon allocation to deep root systems for water acquisition; (ii) stress tolerance, mediated by enhanced osmotic adjustment capacity; and (iii) microbial synergy, whereby host plants recruit beneficial rhizobacteria to augment drought tolerance and resource‐acquisition efficiency. Nevertheless, the integrative responses of plants to environmental stresses and competing use of resources (light, water, and nutrients) in intercropping systems remain poorly understood. Generally, asymmetric competition for light can reduce light interception of the lower plants while concurrently decreasing their canopy temperature. Hydraulic redistribution by deep-rooted plants may transfer water to shallow soil horizons during nighttime, facilitating complementary water use by shallow-rooted neighbours. Additionally, interspecific complementarity between legumes and cereals, via biological nitrogen fixation of legumes and the mobilisation of micronutrients (Fe and Zn) by the cereal, can reduce external chemical fertilizer inputs. The cascading effects of these above- and below-ground processes on soil physiochemical properties and microbial functioning, and their subsequent feedbacks on plant physiology and biochemistry, constitute critical knowledge gap that warrants further investigation.
This Research Topic aims to gather insights into physiological processes, and genomics, proteomics, or microbial communities should be linked to physiological processes. The descriptive field experiments or surveys are out of scope. We welcome the submission of Reviews, Mini Reviews, Methods, Opinion, and Original Research manuscripts to deepen our understanding of the environmental resilience of plants, e.g., staple crops, grass, and cover plants, and enhance resource use and production in intercropping, including but not limited to:
•Optimal plant combinations, configurations, and management strategies under environmental stress to enhance productivity.
•Response of functional traits of plants to environmental stresses.
•Response of plant resource utilization to environmental stresses.
•Microbial-mediated process of plant adaptation to the environmental stresses.
•Interactions between environmental stresses and diseases, insects, and weeds shaped plant growth.
The environmental stresses include, but are not limited to, drought, flood, shade, heat wave, or cold.
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