Molecular Advances in Crop Protection and Agrobiotechnology

Dear Colleagues,

Plants continuously sensing sophisticated stimulates and regulate their physiological state for optimized adaption to the environment. These stimulates, including various pathogens (microorganisms and nematodes), insects, weeds, and extreme growing conditions, have profound effects on crop adaptations, such as the molecular interactions between crops and pathogens. Stimulates can seriously threaten the health and yield of crops each year, and directly lead to malnutrition, starvation, migration, death, and even regional conflicts and wars. There exist complicated networks of genetic, biochemical, physical, and metabolic interactions between crops and their associated environments (biotic and abiotic). Uncovering the underlying mechanisms of these multi-layer molecular crop–environment interactions and exploring the applications of crop protection or agrobiotechnology methods could be of great value for crop cultivation, breeding, and utilization.

In the long-term coevolution of crops and their environment, they have gradually become united and established profound internal correlations. In recent years, scientists have achieved remarkable advances regarding the molecular mechanisms of crop–environment interactions, but research on their internal correlations, plant protection and agrobiotechnology methods tends to be limited in scope and only address the discovery of resistance genes. We look forward to not only providing an explanation of the functional properties of the molecular interactions between crops and their environment, but also addressing the utilization of crop resources and its effects on the environment.

The aim of this Special Issue is to expand our understanding of molecular advances in crop protection and agrobiotechnology in the utilization of crop resources, which will facilitate plant cultivation, breeding, and utilization to enhance the yield and quality of crops in modern agriculture.

We welcome the submission of original research articles, reviews, mini-reviews, perspectives, and methods related to, but not limited to, the following topics:

• multi-omics studies of plant-microbiome/plant-environment interactions;
• sensitive detection techniques application for plant pathogens;
• resistance gene;
• reactive oxygen species;
• plant–pathogen interaction;
• plant–insect interaction;
• pathogen effectors;
• biological control;
• new strategy for plant protection;
• application of natural small molecular of plant origin with biological activity in plant tolerance improvement;
• agrobiotechnology in utilization of crop resources.

Dr. Kun Zhang
Dr. Kai Xu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• crop protection
• interactions
• agrobiotechnology