Journal of Plant Growth Regulation - Call for Papers: Microbe-Mediated Regulation of Plant Growth and Stress Physiology

Non-pathogenic beneficial microbes are pivotal biological resources associated with plants across all different growth stages. They live with plants' above- (phyllosphere) or below-ground (rhizosphere) parts and as endophytes or epiphytes. Microbial symbionts support plant growth by nutrient mobilization, transport, and solubilization, regulate host plant physiology, and maintain healthy metabolism. Microbes, beneficial or pathogenic, produce several chemical and enzymatic substances during interactions with plants that can significantly regulate immune and defense signaling. This signal-to-response significantly regulates plants' endogenous phytohormonal, biochemical, metabolite, and molecular physiology. Recently, plant-associated microbes have been coined as a second functional genome highly variable in diversity, abundance, structure, and function. The microbial symbiosis and desired function can be affected by (i) abiotic factors (temperature, water), soil chemistry, and nutrient cycling; (ii) plant species, genotypes, and developmental stage; (iii) biotic factors (interactions with pathogens), and (iv) plant root exudation patterns. In the last two to three decades, microbial resources have been shown to possess substantial importance in achieving the goal of sustainable plant growth and eco-friendlier resources for combating the challenges due to climatic changes (cold, heat, flooding, drought, salinity, UV, etc). Also, evidence suggests that climate change may facilitate the emergence of new pathogenic strains via host-pathogen interactions. There is an urgent need to understand and develop scientific knowledge of plant-microbes-climate stress interactions by adopting multifaceted molecular, biochemical, and metabolite signaling and response mechanisms to maintain plant growth and yield for an ever-increasing human population.

Inoculation and symbiosis of axenic microbial culture or synthetic microbial consortia (natural or modified) can ameliorate plant growth and performance during stress conditions. However, microbial combinations that benefit plants are restricted to lab-scale research with few field testbeds. Hence, the current issue is planned to explore and create base knowledge concerning plant-microbe-stress interactions and reveal the signal-to-response function of microbes during plant growth in the laboratory as well as in the field. This issue focuses on plant growth, biomass, photosynthesis, physiology (phytohormonal, biochemical, and molecular), biotic and abiotic stresses, signaling and responses, plant-microbe-immune interactome, phytomicrobiome, and growth regulatory pathways and process mechanism. The studies on plant-microbe interactions focusing on understanding large-scale plant phenome, epigenome, and transcriptome are critical and are highly encouraged for submission to this issue. This special issue welcomes all submissions (research articles, reviews, commentary) dealing with plant-microbe interaction, especially investigating plant growth and underlying molecular mechanisms during stress conditions. 

Topics in scope for this special issue include, but are not limited to:

• Plant-immune signaling and responses
• Microbe and microbiome function
• Fungal and bacterial diversity
• Abiotic and biotic stresses
• Oxidative stress
• Plant physiology and phenotyping
• Genetic mechanisms and gene expression
• Plant hormones in plant-microbe interaction
• Multi-OMICs (metagenomics, metatranscriptomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics)
• Specialized molecules for growth and stress signaling
• Bioinformatics 
• Methods of plant growth and microbes interaction

Opening for submissions: 1 November 2023
Submission closes: 31 July 2024

Editors

Abdul Latif Khan
University of Houston, Texas, USA

Axel Mithöfer
Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany