Numerous biotic and abiotic stresses can significantly decrease crop growth and yields. In the context of climate change, stresses will be more frequent in the coming years and will have an even more severe impact on agricultural systems. As a result, crop production could be drastically reduced, with the consequences aggravated by the fact that the world’s growing population will require more food production. Furthermore, among abiotic stresses, the salinity of soils and water for agricultural use, as well as drought, particularly impact crops. For these reasons, sustainable measures need to be implemented to maintain/increase crop production and ensure the resilience of agricultural systems. To this end, biostimulants, materials that can increase crop productivity and the quality profile of end products, are an increasingly popular solution. The primary function of biostimulants is improving nutrient use efficiency, quality traits, and stress tolerance, as well as ensuring the bioavailability of nutrients in the soil or rhizosphere. Therefore, this Special Issue published research on the effects of biostimulants on helping crops to cope with abiotic stresses, focusing on salt and drought stress. In addition, scientific contributions on the use of biostimulants to counteract other abiotic stresses, such as potentially toxic metals and extreme temperatures, are also welcome. New substances with biostimulant action and studies investigating the mechanisms of action of biostimulants and their qualitative, economic, and environmental benefits will also be considered.

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Fruits and vegetables are important sources of nutrients, such as vitamins, minerals, and bioactive compounds, and provide many health benefits. However, due to non-optimal post-harvest management, large quantities of fresh or fresh-cut fruits and vegetables experience a decline in their quality and nutritional value before they reach the consumer. This Special Issue covers technologies for the harvesting, handling, and storage of vegetables, including storage strategies such as active packaging, edible coatings, the application of nanotechnology in the post-harvest of vegetable crops, and others, with the aim of improving the shelf-life of fresh and fresh-cut fruits and vegetables.

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This reprint presents the published papers of a Special Issue titled Antioxidant Activity of Essential Oils, of the journal Antioxidants, MDPI. Obviously, essential oils are a point of huge interest, due to them being rich in bioactive substances (with their recognised antioxidant, immunomodulatory, antibacterial, antiviral, etc., effects) and are also used extensively in the beauty/cosmetic industry, food products, etc. Considering the global trend of "return to nature", both in eating habits/nutrition, and in the adjuvant therapies (implying essential oils) addressed in the case of numerous diseases, and taking into account the interest of the authors who submitted their papers, the current topic can be considered to be of great interest and with increased and promising potential for future research.

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With the development of the aquatic feed industry, new feedstuff and feed additives have been developed, but their roles on the growth and immunity of different aquaculture animals remain to be examined. In addition to essential nutrients, feedstuffs and feed additives must contain some biologically active constituents to support fish growth and wellness. However, some also have adverse effects on growth performance through the introduction of undesirable materials. This Special Issue focuses on the application of feedstuffs and additives in aquaculture species’ growth and immunity, especially recently developed feedstuff and additives.

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Hydrogen sulfide (H2S), which was previously considered to be toxic, is now regarded as a burgeoning endogenous gaseous transmitter. H2S plays a vital role in the mechanism of response/adaptation to adverse environmental conditions as well as crosstalk with other signaling molecules, including ROS, by affecting the corresponding gene expression and subsequent enzyme activities. Both H2S and ROS are potent signaling molecules that can provoke reversible and irreversible oxidative post-translational modifications on cysteine residues of proteins such as sulfenylation or persulfidation, affecting the redox status and function of the target proteins. The dynamic interplay between persulfidation and sulfenylation occurring on cysteine residues is of great importance in response to environmental changes.The present Special Issue of IJMS has the aim of providing the most current findings on the function of signaling molecules, including H2S and ROS, in higher plants, and it is open to different types of manuscripts, including original research papers, perspectives, or reviews where either ROS, H2S, or related molecules could be involved at the biochemical or physiological levels.

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Fresh fruit and vegetables are considered as essential components of a healthy human diet, due to their pleasant taste and rich nutrients. However, fruits and vegetables are characterized by production seasonality, regionality, and perishability, which greatly affect the acceptance of consumers and increase the challenges of their post-harvest storage and preservation. A plurality of preservation technologies, including chemical treatment (calcium chloride, 1-methylcyclopropene, salicylic acid, etc.), physical methods (low-temperature conditioning, controlled atmosphere storage, ultraviolet-C irradiation, etc.), and biotechnology (such as genetic engineering technology) have been applied to maintain storage quality and to extend the storage life of fresh fruit and vegetables in recent years. Developing advanced preservation techniques to prolong the storage life of fruit and vegetables is of importance for improving social and economic benefits. Therefore, we invited authors to contribute original research articles and review articles focused on the innovative preservation technology of fresh produce, addressing storage problems, such as post-harvest quality deterioration caused by senescence, physiological disorders, and disease, to extend the shelf-life of fresh produce and reduce post-harvest loss.

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Abiotic stress represents the main constraint for agriculture, affecting plant growth and productivity worldwide. Yield losses in agriculture will be potentiated in the future by global warming, increasing contamination, and reduced availability of fertile land. The challenge for agriculture of the present and future is that of increasing the food supply for a continuously growing human population under environmental conditions that are deteriorating in many areas of the world. Minimizing the effects of diverse types of abiotic stresses represents a matter of general concern. Research on all topics related to abiotic stress tolerance, from understanding the stress response mechanisms of plants to developing cultivars and crops tolerant to stress, is a priority. This Special Issue is focused on the physiological and molecular characterization of crop resistance to abiotic stresses, including novel research, reviews, and opinion articles covering all aspects of the responses and mechanisms of plant tolerance to abiotic. Contributions on physiological, biochemical, and molecular studies of crop responses to abiotic stresses; the description and role of stress-responsive genes; marker-assisted screening of stress-tolerant genotypes; genetic engineering; and other biotechnological approaches to improve crop tolerance were considered.

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This Special Issue aims to highlight how plant breeding could contribute to strengthening sustainability in field crop production by integrating the application of modern technologies and tools. This Reprint contains eleven articles focusing on the most recent topic of plant breeding.

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Abiotic stress includes not only single adversities, i.e., drought, salt, temperature, and elevated CO2, but also complex stresses, i.e., saline and alkali soil, and karst environment. Abiotic stresses strongly affect many aspects of a plant’s substance and energy metabolism. Meanwhile, abiotic stress not only affects the physiological processes of photosynthesis, water metabolism, and inorganic nutrient absorption, but it also influences the electrophysiology and other physical parameters of plants. Plant physiological information, especially online physiological information, helps us to understand the plant’s adaptive mechanism and take the effective measures to improve the production of horticultural plants. This Special Issue contains a collection of 11 important research works, which deepen the connotation and expand the denotation of plant physiology under abiotic stress. These works will provide a theoretical basis for the production of horticultural crops under single stresses, such as drought and salt stress, or under complex stresses, such as saline and alkali and karst environments. Readers from all over the globe are expected to greatly benefit from this Special Issue collection both in terms of their own work and to improve the productivity of horticultural crops under complex abiotic stresses. In the future, we hope that the field of plant (horticultural crop) physiology under abiotic stresses flourishes in terms of academic research and publications.

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Integrative omics of plants in response to stress conditions play more crucial roles in the post-genomic era. High-quality genomic data provide more deeper understanding of how plants to survive under environmental stresses. This book is focused on concluding the recent progress in the Protein and Proteome Atlas in plants under different stresses. It covers various aspects of plant protein ranging from agricultural proteomics, structure and function of proteins, and approaches for protein identification and quantification.

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The survival of plants under stressful environments requires the study of the mechanisms that help in reversing the adverse impacts of reactive oxygen species (ROS) excessively generated under these conditions. Understanding the mechanisms helps in adopting strategies to induce such mechanisms for the better acclimation of plants. These ROS, if not scavenged, cause damage of cellular components, including lipids, proteins, nucleic acids, and metabolites, and, in extreme cases, even the death of cells in plants. Confronted with abiotic stress, there is an initial elevation in ROS that activates redox signaling to initiate defense in plants through the activation of antioxidant activity. The improvement in the capacity of antioxidant machinery is one of the essential strategies with which to develop tolerance and relieve the pressure of abiotic-stress-induced oxidative changes for the survival of plants. This reprint provides knowledge on the following aspects: Impact of abiotic stress factors and the response of antioxidant machinery to changing abiotic stress conditions, as well as strategies with which to strengthen antioxidant machinery for the survival of plants; Strategies to improve the tolerance mechanisms of plants against abiotic stress factors; Roles and the mechanisms of the plant signaling molecules/growth modifiers/mineral nutrients/hormones/other elicitors in relieving the impacts of abiotic stresses; The utilization of approaches such as genomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, ionomics, and nutiomics to strengthen antioxidant machinery and make plant life easier under abiotic stress conditions.

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This Special Issue provides 15 research articles and 4 comprehensive review articles on various aspects of plant–metal/metalloid interactions. - Up-to-date information on plant responses to metals/metalloids are published. - Various mechanisms of plant tolerance to metals’/metalloids’ toxicity are presented. - Exogenous applications of mitigating metals’/metalloids’ toxicity are discussed. - Sustainable technologies in growing plants in metal/metalloid-contaminated environments are discussed. - Phytoremediation techniques for the remediation of metals/metalloids are discussed.

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We would like to provide the scientists a set of studies entitled "Study of the Influence of Abiotic and Biotic Stress Factors on Horticultural Plants". The reprint book contains 12 papers about the influence of the stress factors on the plant growth and soil parameters. Authors descripted the impact of the biotic and abiotic stress factors (i.e., high, and low temperature, salt, inorganic pollutants such as salts, heavy metals, phosphite, as well as irrigation) on the physiological, biochemical, and anatomical changes occurring in the plants at the cellular, tissue, organ, and whole plant level. The subject of these studies were different plant species, i.e., watermelon, lettuce, kale, potato, grapevine, hops, orchid, strawberry, and boxwood. The ideas of the papers can be divided into five topics: (1) achieving better quality of plant material for food production by changes made in the growth conditions, metabolic and genetic modifications; (2) increasing the plant resistance to environmental stresses by application of exogenous compounds of different chemical character; (3) reducing plant stress caused by anthropogenic activity applying nonmodified and genetically modified plants; (4) mitigating drought stress by irrigation; and 5) the positive effect of plant growth-promoting microorganisms on horticulture plants performance during drought stress.

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