Editorial: Emerging Technologies for the Study of Plant Environmental Sensing

Plants and environmental sensing It is the plant’s autotrophic photosynthetic abilities that allow it to survive in its original location without the need to move its whole life, but it is continuously exposed to changes in envir-onmental conditions, which at times can be very severe. To tackle the many environmental challenges directly, plants have evolved several environmental sensing systems and physiological mechanisms of adaptation (Taiz et al. 2015). Such environmental factors include light, temperature, gravity, water, nutrients, heavy metals, salt, herbivore insects and ani-mals, and pathogens. In nature, plants may face any of those multiple factors at the same one time. In contrast to plants, animals have various sensory organs. Each organ is suited to a particular environmental factor, and all environmental signals are integrated into the centra