Scaling Functional Responses of Wild and Cultivated Plants: Mechanisms, Trade-Offs, and Resilience in Natural and Agricultural Systems

Research on plant responses to environmental stress is increasingly vital as global change accelerates. Both natural and agricultural systems are facing unprecedented pressures from climate warming, altered precipitation patterns, land-use intensification, and ongoing biodiversity loss. Recent studies emphasize the need to understand plant performance across multiple biological scales, from molecular mechanisms to whole-ecosystem processes. However, significant gaps remain in linking detailed trait variability—at molecular, cellular, and organ levels—to community and ecosystem functioning. Ongoing debates concern the relative importance of intraspecific plasticity versus interspecific species turnover in buffering stress, the stability of classical functional trade-offs under continuous environmental change, and the evolutionary consequences of crop domestication for resilience. While emerging technologies such as high-throughput phenotyping, remote sensing, and artificial intelligence offer new opportunities for data integration and scaling, there is still limited predictive power for how plants adapt and contribute to ecosystem resilience across contrasting ecological contexts.This Research Topic aims to develop a mechanistic and integrative framework for scaling functional responses of wild and cultivated plants. By bridging data and concepts from molecular biology, biochemistry, trait ecology, and ecosystem science, the goal is to resolve key uncertainties about plant adaptation under global change. Core questions include: How do functional traits coordinate across biological organization levels and environmental gradients? To what extent does domestication reshape the balance between plasticity, genetic differentiation, and adaptive capacity? Can trait-based metrics predict the persistence of both wild species and crops in increasingly variable and stressful environments? Contributions should seek to clarify the relative roles of trait variability, ecological strategies, and novel methodologies for supporting ecosystem multifunctionality, biodiversity, and sustainable agriculture.This Research Topic encompasses studies that examine the boundaries and drivers of functional plant responses from individuals to ecosystems, in both wild and cultivated systems. We welcome articles that address, but are not limited to, the following themes:• Patterns of interspecific and intraspecific trait variation in leaves, wood, roots, and hydraulic architecture across environmental gradients• Integration of structural, physiological, and biochemical traits underlying plant ecological strategies• Mechanisms of metabolic, defense-related, and stress-tolerance responses and their role in adaptive capacity• Drivers of functional differentiation, including climate variability, soil heterogeneity, disturbance regimes, and agricultural management• Comparative analyses of wild and cultivated plant responses, focusing on the impact of domestication and breeding• Application of remote sensing, high-throughput phenotyping, artificial intelligence, and integrative modeling for scaling plant responses• Connections between plant functional traits, biodiversity, and ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, water regulation, and productivity stability• Interplay between phenotypic plasticity and genetic differentiation in shaping ecosystem resilience under climate changeWe encourage submissions in a range of formats, including Brief Research Reports, Editorials, FAIR² Data, FAIR² DATA Direct Submissions, General Commentary, Hypothesis and Theory papers, Methods, Mini Reviews, Opinions, Original Research, Perspectives, Reviews, and Systematic Reviews. Topic editors: Jalal Kassout, Mohammed Ater, Yanzheng Yang Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/78694/scaling-functional-responses-of-wild-and-cultivated-plants-mechanisms-trade-offs-and-resilience-in-natural-and-agricultural-systems