Predicting Resilience in Vegetable Crops: Validated Stress Indicators from Markers to Management

Climate change is exposing vegetable crops and other annual horticultural crops to more frequent and unpredictable drought, salinity, heat, cold, flooding, and interacting resource limitations, where marketable yield and product quality are as vulnerable as biomass. The challenge is not simply to document plant responses, but to identify indicators that reliably predict tolerance, recovery, production stability, and quality across genotypes and environments and translate them into sustainable adaptation strategies. Many physiological or molecular markers are derived from single controlled experiments without adequate validation or clear agronomic relevance, while promising management interventions are often evaluated without a predictive or mechanistic basis. This Research Topic focuses on the connection between robust stress indicators and practical routes to climate readiness, drawing on physiological, biochemical, molecular, phenomic, computational, breeding, and agronomic evidence while emphasizing reproducibility, validation, and relevance to sustainable vegetable production in field, protected, and controlled environments.This Research Topic aims to determine which measurable traits and biological signatures — physiological, biochemical, and molecular, including marker- and association-mapping-based signatures — reliably predict crop performance under single, combined, sequential, or recurring climate-related stresses, and how such knowledge can support effective adaptation. Key questions include: How consistently do candidate indicators perform across genotypes, cultivars, developmental stages, and environments? Can multi-scale data improve prediction of stress tolerance, post-stress recovery, production stability, quality, and resource-use efficiency? Which breeding and crop-management strategies can convert predictive knowledge into durable, environmentally responsible resilience? Contributions may address predictive indicators, sustainable adaptation strategies, or their relationship; individual manuscripts need not cover every approach represented in the collection. Each study should advance prediction, validation, or evidence-based adaptation rather than merely catalogue changes caused by stress.We welcome Original Research, Review, Systematic Review, Methods, and Perspective articles addressing:• Discovery, evaluation, or validation of physiological, biochemical, molecular, and phenotypic stress indicators;• Omics-derived biomarkers, molecular-marker and association-mapping approaches, and targeted gene-expression signatures;• Indicator-guided genotype and cultivar screening;• High-throughput phenotyping, imaging, modeling, and machine learning;• Transferability across genotypes, environments, and scales;• Sustainable adaptation through breeding, beneficial microorganisms, irrigation, nutrition, and precision management.Studies may examine drought, salinity, temperature extremes, flooding, nutrient imbalance, or combined, sequential, and recurring stresses. Greenhouse, field, and multi-environment validation is especially encouraged. The collection focuses on annual vegetable species grown for a marketable product. Articles may address indicator research, adaptation strategies, or both; no manuscript is required to include every component. Purely descriptive stress-response studies without predictive, validation, or adaptation value are outside the intended scope. Topic editors: Ömer Faruk Coşkun, HIRA SINGH, Alim Aydın Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84895/predicting-resilience-in-vegetable-crops-validated-stress-indicators-from-markers-to-management