Physiological and Ecological Adaptations of Plants to Climate Change

Submission Deadline: 30 April 2026 View: 513 Submit to Special Issue

Guest Editors

Prof. Dr. AZIZ BIN AHMAD

Email: aaziz@umt.edu.my

Affiliation: Faculty of Science and Marine Environment, University Malaysia Terengganu, 21300 Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia

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Research Interests: physiological and biochemical response of plants and microalgae toward biotic and abiotic changes

Assist. Prof. Wahizatul Afzan Azmi

Email: wahizatul@umt.edu.my

Affiliation: Faculty of Science and Marine Environment, Universiti Malaysia Terengganu, 21030 Kuala Nerus, Terengganu, Malaysia

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Research Interests: insect biology and ecology, with particular focus onintegrated pest management (IPM) strategies

Summary

Global climate change is reshaping the environmental context in which plants grow, with profound consequences for ecosystems, agriculture, and human well-being. Rising temperatures, altered precipitation regimes, elevated atmospheric CO₂ concentrations, and more frequent extreme weather events impose new abiotic stresses, such as drought, heat, and salinity, that challenge plant survival and productivity. As sessile organisms, plants must finely tune physiological, biochemical, and molecular processes to maintain water balance, optimise photosynthesis, and allocate resources under fluctuating conditions. Simultaneously, warming and altered resource availability are redefining biotic interactions: shifts in phenology affect pollinator relationships, modified nutritional quality influences herbivory, and changing soil moisture alters plant–microbe symbioses. These cascading effects can destabilise community composition, nutrient cycling, and carbon sequestration, with feedbacks to the climate system itself. Understanding plant-environment interactions in the context of climate change is thus crucial for predicting ecosystem resilience and securing global food supplies.

This special issue aims to bring together interdisciplinary research spanning field studies, controlled experiments, remote sensing, and modelling approaches to illuminate how plants cope with, adapt to, and potentially mitigate the impacts of a changing climate. By integrating scales from molecular biology, physiology, ecology, and climate science to landscape, it seeks to advance our capacity to foster resilient agroecosystems and safeguard Earth's green infrastructure in an era of unprecedented environmental change.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

· Impacts of climate change on plant physiological and ecological processes.
· Molecular and cellular mechanisms of plant-environment interactions.
· Adaptation and evolutionary strategies of plants under climate change.
· Effects of climate change on agricultural systems and plant resources.
· Green innovation and sustainable management strategies to address plant-environment interactions under changing climates.

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