This study of the response of sunflower to night chilling under controlled and field conditions can provide valuable insights for plant biologists to help understand phenotypic plasticity and adaptation to abiotic environments. The results are also relevant for plant breeders to adapt crops to new cropping systems to mitigate impacts of climate change on agriculture. To better understand long-term impacts of early stress, future studies could focus on freezing tolerance and its similarities and differences with night chilling, and on interactions between early cold stress and later drought stress at the physiological and molecular levels, especially on epigenetically driven stress memory.