Dear Colleagues,

Besides the traditional and crucial indirect functionalities exerted by soil organic matter in the plant-soil systems, the scientific advances have highlighted direct beneficial interactions promoted by natural organic molecules on plant growth and development.

It has been pointed out that the higher plants may have evolved a cross-talking relation with soil organic fractions able to influence the biochemical pathways and physiological processes. Different natural organic matter components, have hence been so far succesfully applied as plant biostimulants.

In this context an interesting perspective is opened by the use of recycled biomasses which being renewable and cost-effective sources of organic materials may strenghten the environmental and ecomnomic valorization of organic wastes within a circular economy framework. Compost, vermicompost, digestates, biochar, hydrochars, biorefinery residues etc and derived fractions have proved to trigger positive plant responses and improve the yield of metabolites for different value chains such as agricultural, pharmacological, medical and nutraceutical sectors. The use of recycled materials provided evidence to either support plant development or to promote the resilience capacity to biotic and abiotic stresses.

The interactions encompass a large array of bioactivity effects on either overall plant growth such as root elongation/branching and shoot developments as well as on specific metabolic processes: enhanced nutrient use efficiency, improvement of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorous metabolisms and secondary metabolic pathways, induction of plant tolerance to either abiotic and biotic stresses with an effective suppressive potential against plant pathogens.

Notwithstanding the already acknowledged outputs, there are still scientific gaps to face with, in the topical attempts aimed at addressing a comprehensive understanding of structural-activity relationships. The acquisition of supplentary data to enlighten the specific interactions may support the set up of potential "tailoring application" of different organic materials for specific plants and crop systems and/or target plant metabolites with added values for dedicated applications.

The current scenario is characterized by the worsening of adverse growing conditions and uncertainty of crop productivity driven by either the climate change, or the mismatch between the plant needs and the not affordable or untenbale external inputs (e.g. fertilizers, high cost techniques, agrochemicals). The feasible management and processing of organic residues is an edge-cut challenge for the attainment of eco-friendly products and easy-to-hand technologies like those represented by synergic integration of bioactive compounds and microbial bioeffectorst to foster the plant adaptation to these fast evolving situation.

This Special Issue aims to features the progress and trends in the investigation of the use of recycled biomasses and related byprodcuts as sustainable tools to streamline the plants growth for different research area, sweeping from agro-ecosystems, phytochemistry, pharmaceutical and cosmetic applications, nutraceutical products, etc . Combined aims are the depiction of sustainable tecnologis focused on tne optimization of available resources as well as elucidation of molecular mechanisms and structural-activity relationships underpinning the bioactive properties of organic residues.

Prof. Dr. Riccardo Spaccini
Dr. Mariavittoria Verrillo
Prof. Dr. Luciano Pasqualoto Canellas
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• plants development
• plant metabolites
• biomasse recycling
• biostimulation
• biofertilizers
• abiotic/biotic stresses
• structural activity relationship
• eco-compatible agrochemicals
• sustainable technologies
• circular economy