Ecological Adaptation Mechanisms Underlying Successful Plant Reproduction

As sessile organisms, plants have evolved sophisticated adaptive strategies to withstand fluctuating and often unpredictable environments. These strategies optimize reproductive traits, enabling plants to sustain reproduction under adverse conditions. Crucially, this environmentally driven reproductive plasticity not only ensures species survival but also offers avenues to enhance crop yield and quality. Addressing a critical gap in understanding how reproductive physiology integrates environmental adaptation, this review synthesizes recent advances on how external signals (e.g., light, temperature) interact with endogenous regulators (e.g., phytohormones, transcription factors, small peptides, receptor-like kinases) to modulate plant reproductive processes. It encompasses the full spectrum of reproductive biology, spanning floral transition, floral organ specification, gametogenesis, and fertilization. Furthermore, we discuss the potential applications of reproductive biology in future crop breeding and outline key research directions to advance the field.