European Journal of Sustainable Agroecosystems

Background: Agroecosystems around the globe are experiencing many simultaneous climate, hydrology, and biotic events that make it imperative to find methods to measure their resilience, which should go beyond the mere assessment of the amount of yield. Techniques of any ecophysiology type (such as measurements of gas exchange in leaves, etc.) can provide some helpful information regarding the ability of different crop cultivation systems to withstand above events and recover from them.

Objectives: This review is based on the relevant peer-reviewed studies and grey literature published throughout the period between 2015 and 2025 in order to show how ecophysiological indicators can help measure agroecosystem resilience, which types of these indicators are useful and what remaining methodological problems exist in obtaining the results.

Sources of literature: A well-organized and correctly constructed search in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, and Google Scholar allowed identifying 1,798 papers; after their narrowing down to 107 papers for qualitative analysis and 84 papers for another comparative analysis, it became possible to conduct this review.

Key findings: Scientific literature reveals five specific area indicators: our knowledge of canopy/(leaf) gas exchange quantities (net photosynthesis, stomatal conductance, and water use and efficiency); photochemical indicators (Fv/Fm, steady state fluorescence and OJIP-derived indices); plant water status indicators (leaf water potential, relative water content and water stress integral); remote sensing/canopy indicators (NDVI, EVI, LAI and canopy water stress indices); and soil biotic and functional indices indicators (enzyme production, microbial resilience and resistance and root functional traits). Composite indices which are related to different indicator domains, such as Agroecosystemic Resilience Index, are more efficient than indices using single indicators for evaluating the adaptive capability of ecosystems.

Research gaps: The lack of standardized thresholds, limited availability of multi-year and multi-biome datasets, poor link between the physiology of leaves and landscape-level resilience, and insufficient incorporation of socio-economic aspects into biophysical variables limit the possibilities of comparing studies.

Conclusion: Ecophysiological indicators can be scientifically rigorous and operational for assessing agroecosystem resilience, though making progress towards standardized, replicable, and socially-rooted systems for resilience monitoring requires establishing long-term initiatives, calibrating across biomes, and improving remote sensing collaboration with in situ measurements of physiological and biological aspects.