Sustainable Production of Solanaceous Vegetable Crops Under Climate Change: The Role of Nanoparticles in Enhancing Abiotic Stress Adaptation

Abiotic stress response mechanisms, molecular mitigation, and future strategies in millets

Abiotic stresses, such as drought, salinity, temperature extremes, heavy metals, and pesticide toxicity, severely impact plant growth and productivity, primarily through the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and metabolic imbalances. In the era of climate change and declining agricultural sustainability, the development of stress-resilient crops has become essential for ensuring global food and nutritional security. Millets, also known as ‘super grain’ or ‘miracle grain’ due to their nutritional value, are recognized for their inherent resilience and exhibit superior adaptability in arid and semi-arid ecosystems towards these abiotic stresses. It is due to their C4 photosynthetic efficiency, rapid life cycles, and deep root architecture. These cereals deploy integrated morphological, physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms, including antioxidant defense systems, osmolyte accumulation, stress-responsive gene expression, and hormonal regulation to maintain homeostasis under stress. Despite these traits, millet improvement lags behind that of major cereals due to limited breeding efforts and underdeveloped molecular resources. This review focuses on recent advances in stress tolerance mechanisms, highlighting omics-driven insights, microbial and phytohormonal mitigation strategies, and exploring genome editing and modern breeding tools, such as CRISPR/Cas9 and genome-wide association studies (GWAS), for developing climate-resilient millet cultivars suitable for sustainable agriculture and future food security. The article explores the development of climate-resilient millet varieties by integrating molecular innovations into traditional agronomic practices, which will provide future benefits framework for developing new varieties. Overall, the article will deepen understanding of the molecular processes underlying stress responses and provide targeted solutions to enhance stress tolerance in millets.

Nanoparticles as catalysts of change: toward third-generation seed technology and stress-resilient crops

Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria enhance resilience productivity and quality of high value spice crops

Abiotic stresses such as drought, salinity, extreme temperatures (cold, hot), heavy metal toxicity, flooding, pollutants, and nutrient imbalances are emerging as major threats to global agri-food and nutritional security, significantly constraining crop productivity and resilience. Nowadays, the situation has deteriorated owing to the accelerated and profound alterations in global climatic patterns. It is utmost need to understand and find out the various adaptive and alleviative practices to reduce the impact, in which plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) have the ability to assuage the negative impact of the various stresses and enhanced seed spices productivity and profitability. The interface between PGPR and crops under various stresses are positive worldwide. PGPR play a significant role in enhancing nutrient availability in the soil–plant–microbe system. Additionally, PGPR help lower ethylene levels, increase the concentration of osmolytes, and defend crops from oxidative injure under a diversity of environmental multiple stresses. The application of PGPR to seed spice crops represents a promising strategy to enhance productivity and improve plant resilience under various stress conditions. This review highlights the role of PGPR in mitigating abiotic stresses in seed spice crops and underscores the need for future research to develop effective, long-lasting microbial formulations that support sustainable cultivation under multiple stress conditions.

Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria: dual roles in enhancing nutrition and mitigating climate-related abiotic stresses

This review uniquely integrates the biochemical, physiological, and molecular mechanisms of PGPR in plant nutrition and stress mitigation while critically analyzing contradictory field results and highlighting newly characterized strains and sustainable tools for climate-resilient agriculture.

Biostimulants for Sustainable and Resilient Agriculture

The growing pressure exerted by global food demand, combined with the excessive use of chemical and synthetic inputs, is prompting the agricultural sector to seek innovative and sustainable solutions to improve, or at least maintain, crop yields in a context of increased abiotic stress linked to climate change. Among the promising approaches, biostimulants are attracting growing interest, particularly those derived from natural sources such as seaweed extracts, humic acids, and beneficial microorganisms. These products work through various mechanisms, including osmotic regulation, activation of antioxidant systems, stimulation of root growth, and improvement of nutrient absorption. Many recent research and review articles have explored the optimal combinations of raw materials, formulation processes, target crops, and environmental conditions to maximize beneficial effects on plant growth, soil health, and tolerance to abiotic stresses. As a result, a growing range of commercial products is emerging, with diverse chemical compositions, formulations, and modes of application. However, the precise relationships between the biochemical composition of biostimulants and their physiological effects remain poorly understood, suggesting a key role for molecular synergies. This review provides a concise overview of recent advances in biostimulant research and their potential to enhance food security by improving crop resilience in the context of climate change.

Nanoparticles as Innovative Tools for Enhancing Abiotic Stress Tolerance and Supporting Integrated Disease Management in Oil Crops

Abiotic stresses are major constraints on oil crop productivity worldwide, causing significant yield losses and increasingly threatening global edible oil security. These stresses also weaken plant defense capacity, indirectly increasing vulnerability to pests and diseases and challenging the effectiveness of integrated disease management (IDM) systems. Recent advances identify nanoparticles (NPs) as an innovative and signaling regulator tool for enhancing abiotic stress tolerance in oil crops through coordinated physiological and molecular regulation. The present review synthesizes current knowledge on NPs applications in major oil‐bearing crops, with emphasis on drought, salinity, heavy metal toxicity and temperature extremes. A key innovation is the integration of NPs application strategies with crop‐specific physiological traits, molecular responses, and hormonal and redox signaling networks. We highlight new insights showing that NPs act as active regulators of stress adaptation by stabilizing membranes, maintaining redox homeostasis, activating antioxidant defenses, modulating stress‐responsive gene expression, and interacting with phytohormones and nitric oxide (NO) signaling. By adopting a cross‐crop, cross‐stress framework, the present review moves beyond stress‐ or species‐specific analyses and directly links abiotic stress mitigation to improved plant resilience and IDM robustness. Key research gaps, including limited field validation, uncertainties in optimal dosing and delivery, and insufficient understanding of environmental fate and safety, are identified. Overall, the present review positions NPs‐based strategies as promising complementary tools for sustainable oil crop protection and IDM.