Human activity is causing a global change in plant environment that includes a significant increase in the number and intensity of different stress factors. These include combinations of multiple abiotic and biotic stressors that simultaneously or sequentially impact plants and microbiomes, causing a significant decrease in plant growth, yield and overall health. It was recently found that with the increasing number and complexity of stressors simultaneously impacting a plant, plant growth and survival decline dramatically, even if the level of each individual stress, involved in such 'multifactorial stress combination', is low enough not to have a significant effect. Here we highlight this new concept of multifactorial stress combination and discuss its importance for our efforts to develop climate change-resilient crops.
Keywords: abiotic stress; biotic stress; climate change; crop; global warming; multifactorial stress combination; pollution; stress combination.
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