Heavy metal contamination is a major environmental constraint that negatively affects plant growth, metabolism, and agricultural productivity. Excess metals such as cadmium, lead, and copper disturb cellular functions mainly by inducing oxidative stress, disrupting nutrient balance, and causing toxicity at multiple levels of organization. To cope with these stresses, plants activate complex defense systems, among which melatonin (MT) (N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine) has recently emerged as a key regulatory molecule. This review highlights MT's central role in coordinating plant responses to heavy metal stress. MT strengthens redox homeostasis by enhancing both enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidant systems, thereby reducing reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation and limiting oxidative damage to cellular components. In addition to its antioxidant function, MT regulates metal uptake, transport, and sequestration by modulating transporter families such as NRAMP, ZIP, and HMA, while also promoting detoxification through phytochelatin (PC) and metallothionein (MT) pathways. MT also plays an important role in hormonal crosstalk, interacting with abscisic acid (ABA), jasmonic acid (JA), and salicylic acid (SA) signaling pathways to fine-tune stress perception and downstream defense responses. Furthermore, recent multi-omics studies have shown that MT induces broad transcriptional, proteomic, and metabolomic reprogramming, leading to coordinated adjustments in gene expression, protein activity, and metabolic pathways under heavy metal stress. Overall, MT functions as a central signaling hub that integrates redox regulation, hormonal signaling, and multi-omics networks to enhance plant tolerance to heavy metal stress. These insights deepen understanding of plant stress biology and offer promising strategies to improve crop resilience and phytoremediation efficiency in contaminated environments.
Si-Xi Zhu, Yu-Tian Lv, Shao-Xiong Lin et al.· Plant physiology and biochem...· 0 citations
Irrigation water quality markedly shapes plant growth and physiological functioning, particularly under integrated biotic and abiotic stresses. This study evaluated the influence of irrigation water types, tap water (TW), domestic wastewater (DWW), Lyari wastewater (LWW), and Malir wastewater (MWW), interacting with wastewater-isolated bioprotectant
Trichoderma viride
on
Abelmoschus esculentus
infected with soil-borne pathogens
Fusarium oxysporum
and
Rhizoctonia solani
. Morphological traits, together with ITS amplicon sequencing and BLAST analysis, confirmed
T. viride
(PZ212855). Plants treated with LWW and
T. viride
showed pronounced enhancements in agronomic and physiological traits, i.e., enhanced plant height (101.25 ± 2.87 cm), fresh biomass (24.04 ± 0.86 g), dry biomass (8.45 ± 0.32 g), leaf number (20.25 ± 0.75), fruit fresh biomass (14.33 ± 0.55 g), chlorophyll a (2.12 ± 0.0 4 mg/g F.wt), chlorophyll b (1.30 ± 0.02 mg/g F.wt), total chlorophyll (3.42 ± 0.02 mg/g F.wt), carotenoids (0.75 ± 0.02 mg/g F.wt), and total soluble proteins (1.66 ± 0.02 mg/g F.wt). These increases corresponded with the greater nutrient content of LWW and DWW, which met FAO irrigation standards. DWW upgraded plant functioning, but its slightly higher arsenic concentration required mitigation using
T. viride
in the rhizosphere. MWW, exhibiting greater physicochemical loads and higher arsenic, generated oxidative stress, increased H
2
O
2
(2.74 ± 0.01 nm/g F.wt) and MDA (0.97 ± 0.03 nm/g F.wt), and reduced growth.
T. viride
partially mitigated these effects by regulating antioxidant enzyme activity. Overall, integrating nutrient-rich wastewater with
T. viride
improved plant growth, yield, and stress resilience under challenging conditions.
Paras Shah, Yuan-Hong Wu, S. Pollmann et al.· Frontiers in Microbiology· 0 citations
The agricultural production system is facing unprecedented pressure of climate change, human population, pressure on renewable and non-renewable resources, and elevation in both biotic and abiotic stress factors. The recent development in nucleic acid based technologies have transformed research in plant sciences through deployment of powerful technologies for understanding complex biological mechanisms controlling climate resilience, nutrition and yield attributes in agriculturally important crops. This editorial documented the key results of 33 articles published in this special issue, covering application of various techniques to improve desirable attributes in agriculturally important crops. Furthermore, the published literature displayed the key findings emerging through the application of CRISPR-Cas based genome editing system, integration of multi-omics, application of machine learning, RNA-based regulations and chloroplast bioengineering with higher precision, efficiency, and reliability. The innovation in plant-microbe interaction, rhizosphere engineering has revealed novel avenues of research for improving the potential of resource use efficiency and sustainability. Altogether, the research published in this special issue may play a transformative role in advancing precision breeding, stress resilience and crop performance under ever-changing climatic conditions. However, there is a requirement for continuous interdisciplinary research, embracing innovation and international collaboration for utilization of full potential of cutting-edge technologies contributing significantly to achieving food security.
S. Fiaz· International Journal of Bio...· 0 citations
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