Plants and climate change: the role of plants in achieving net zero
Guest edited by Professor Christine H. Foyer and Professor Ilse Kranner
Plants and their associated microbiomes must adapt rapidly to the stresses that are predicted to accompany climate change, including high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, increasing frequencies of drought, floods and heatwaves, in addition to the threats posed by new pathogen and pest invasions. Moreover, the importance of nature-based solutions such as reforestation to climate mitigation has been recognised globally. The Earth has become greener with plants producing greater leaf area and enhanced photosynthesis over the last two decades, as a result of the elevated global atmospheric CO2 concentrations. This is 21st Century biochemistry in the plant kingdom, which is the topic of our themed collection on ‘Plants and Climate Change’.
This themed collection focuses on the biochemical plasticity and adaptations of plants and plant-soil microbial interactions to climate change that underpin crop and forest resilience to climatic stress, plant productivity, and ecosystem processes that support nutrient cycling and carbon storage. The collection features not only advances in knowledge of the underpinning plant and microbiome biochemistry and molecular mechanisms, but also highlights our ability to understand and predict impacts that arise from climate-driven shifts in plant productivity and plant-soil interactions.
This collection establishes a new mechanistic understanding of how climate-driven shifts will modify agronomically- and environmentally-important aspects of plant health and productivity, facilitating prediction of climate impacts on different agro-ecosystems as well as natural and managed ecosystems such as grass- and heathlands, and forests.
We would like to thank all the authors for their excellent contributions, and we hope you enjoy reading this special collection.
