Innovations in Urban Horticulture

Dear Colleagues,

Climate change, environmental concerns, an increasing urban population, and the reduction of natural resources—soil, water, and biodiversity, in quantity and quality—are major world-wide challenges that are driving the development of urban agriculture. In the coming years, we will see a more technified agriculture that will have to be managed with increasingly scarce and poorer quality resources. This is especially important in semi-arid Mediterranean regions, where abiotic stresses are increasing. Abiotic stresses can have negative effects on the growth and survival of plants, reducing crop productivity and food security. However, applying a controlled abiotic stress to species with a certain tolerance to stress, such as halophytes, can cause these stresses to act as elicitors for the biosynthesis of many bioactive compounds. These active compounds, which serve as functional molecules for crop adaptation, are also of great interest due to their beneficial effects on human health. Elicitors, whether biotic or abiotic, can provoke the biochemical mechanism of plants to produce compounds that will create the desired agronomic features, for use as nutraceuticals. We should also consider other abiotic factors such as water stress, high temperatures, and some aspects of different productive factors such as growing media, lighting, etc., on the nutritional value or quantity of healthy compounds in crops produced in different urban agriculture systems.

This Special Issue invites the submission of original research papers, opinions, review papers, and perspectives examining the main factors involved in the modulation of the nutritional, functional, and organoleptic quality of crop plants grown in urban and peri-urban agriculture.

Dr. Jesus Ochoa
Guest Editor

Dr. Almudena Giménez
Dr. Victor M. Gallegos-Cedillo
Dr. Cinthia Nájera
Guest Editor Assistants

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