Preharvest Environmental Stress and Crop Performance: Predictive and Digital Approaches in Climate-Smart Agronomy

Climate variability and environmental stress increasingly influence crop productivity, stability, and resource-use efficiency in agronomic and horticultural crops. Temperature extremes, water limitation, nutrient imbalances, and shifting atmospheric conditions affect plant growth, development, and physiological performance during production. Climate-smart agronomy has advanced adaptive management strategies to address these challenges. However, the downstream consequences of preharvest stress on crop quality, storability, and loss remain insufficiently integrated into agronomic decision-making. Field-level factors such as genotype selection, irrigation, nutrient management, and harvest timing directly influence plant physiological status and subsequent performance. Therefore, strengthening the linkage between preharvest conditions and measurable outcomes is essential for improving resilience, productivity, and sustainability under variable environmental conditions.

This Research Topic aims to advance understanding of how preharvest environmental stress and agronomic management practices influence crop performance under climate variability. The collection focuses on identifying and quantifying the physiological and agronomic drivers that determine crop response, adaptation, and stability during production.

Contributions are encouraged that examine crop responses to environmental stress, including effects on growth, development, resource use, and harvest readiness. In addition, the Topic welcomes predictive and data-driven approaches that enhance early detection of stress impacts and support informed agronomic decision-making. Artificial intelligence and modelling tools may be applied to forecast crop performance, while digital traceability approaches can support improved monitoring and linkage of field conditions to measurable outcomes.

While the primary emphasis is on preharvest processes, studies that demonstrate how these factors influence downstream performance, including quality stability and loss susceptibility, are also within scope when clearly linked to agronomic conditions.

We invite original research, reviews, and perspectives addressing:
• Environmental stress effects on crop growth, physiology, and productivity (i.e. crop-environment interaction)
• Agronomic management practices for climate adaptation and resilience
• Plant responses to temperature, water, nutrient, and atmospheric variability
• Harvest timing and indicators of crop readiness under stress conditions
• Predictive modelling and artificial intelligence for forecasting crop performance
• Data-driven and digital approaches for monitoring agronomic conditions

Submissions should focus on preharvest processes and clearly demonstrate how environmental and management factors influence measurable crop performance outcomes. Studies linking production conditions to downstream quality or loss metrics are considered where the agronomic basis is explicit.

Article types and fees

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

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• ... 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
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• General Commentary
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Policy Brief
• Review
• Systematic Review

Keywords: Preharvest stress, Climate-smart agronomy, Environmental stress physiology, Predictive modelling, crop performance, crop-environment interaction

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.