Aug 2026· International Journal of Molecular Sciences· Vol 27· 0 citations· 102 references
Medicine
TL;DR
A phytohormone-centric framework is proposed to select strains that optimize growth, ion homeostasis and plant stress resilience under salinity, integrating molecular evidence with morpho-physiological studies and proposing a phytohormone-centric framework to select strains that optimize growth, ion homeostasis and plant stress resilience under salinity.
Abstract
Salinity stress is one of the major stressors that limits yield potential in field crops. Salinity-led imbalances in ionic and water potential, as well as oxidative damage, impair photosynthesis. Plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs) have been demonstrated to mitigate salinity-stress-induced damage through various mechanisms such as biofilm and exopolysaccharide production, modulation of plant root architecture or molecular signaling involving modulation of sodium/potassium efflux transporters. PGPRs are known to induce biosynthesis and signaling of various phytohormones in plants. PGPR-derived phytohormones can in turn regulate molecular signaling involved in maintaining ion fluxes, preventing salinity-induced senescence, and reinforcing plant root architecture, thereby maintaining plant growth and development under saline conditions. In this review, we provide comprehensive advances on how PGPRs modulate and integrate biosynthesis and/or signaling of various phytohormones, such as auxins, cytokinins, gibberellin, ethylene, abscisic acid, salicylic acid, jasmonates, brassinosteroids and strigolactones, to reshape plant architecture, physiological and biochemical responses in plants under salinity. We integrate molecular evidence with morpho-physiological studies and propose a phytohormone-centric framework to select strains that optimize growth, ion homeostasis and plant stress resilience under salinity.
Overall, BRs represent promising targets for improving crop stress resilience; however, optimizing BR-mediated strategies and validating their long-term performance under diverse field conditions will be essential for their successful application in sustainable agriculture.
R. Jan, Shahzad Iqbal, Sajad Ali et al.· Plants· 0 citations
Terrestrial plants are frequently exposed to fluctuating abiotic stresses throughout their life cycle, and mycorrhizae can markedly enhance host plant resistance to such challenges. This review summarizes recent advances in our understanding of how arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) enhance host plant tolerance through multiple mechanisms. AMF promote stress tolerance through diverse mechanisms, including nutrient solubilization, polyamine accumulation, reactive oxygen species scavenging, physiological improvements, maintenance of ultrastructural stability via membrane integrity, accumulation of osmolytes such as trehalose, proline, polyamine, and glycine betaine, and activation of antioxidant enzymes to alleviate oxidative stress. While substantial progress has been made, the underlying AMF-mediated stress tolerance mechanisms remain underexplored. Future research should focus on dissecting how signaling pathways interact to regulate gene expression in mycorrhizal plants and elucidating the complex regulatory networks operating at the plant-AMF interface. We also outline key research directions for clarifying plant-AMF interactions under stress conditions, as current research highlights the use of beneficial soil microbes to mitigate stress and enhance crop resilience.
Wen-Jing Rui, Jiangtao Du, Jing Li et al.· Physiologia Plantarum : An I...· 0 citations
An exhaustive review of the processes of ABA biosynthesis, metabolism, and its signal transduction pathways sheds light on the complex crosstalk networks that exist among ABA, other phytohormones, PGRs and calcium in the face of various stress conditions, highlighting their pivotal roles in enhancing plant plasticity.
Soil salinity is a major threat to crop productivity, sustainable agriculture, and global food security, with more than 833 million hectares of land affected worldwide. Salt stress restricts plant growth through osmotic stress, ion toxicity, oxidative damage, membrane disruption, reduced photosynthesis, and yield loss. Plants respond through coordinated regulatory networks that connect early stress perception with ion balance, osmotic adjustment, hormone signaling, transcript regulation, and protein modification. Recent advances have identified several sensory and signaling modules involved in salinity responses, including calcium signaling, receptor like kinases, FERONIA, OSCA, MOCA, annexins, and mechanosensitive channels that detect ionic, osmotic, and mechanical changes. Established pathways such as the SOS pathway and GABA shunt are included as established background mechanisms for sodium homeostasis and metabolic adjustment under saline conditions. Hormonal networks involving abscisic acid, ethylene, jasmonic acid, auxin, gibberellins, and brassinosteroids coordinate root architecture, stomatal control, antioxidant defense, growth restraint, and post-stress recovery. Emerging regulatory layers mediated by microRNAs, phosphorylation, ubiquitination, and SUMOylation further fine tune transcript stability, protein activity, ion transport, redox balance, and stress resilience. A central challenge is the translational gap between model species and crops, since many mechanisms defined in Arabidopsis and rice still lack functional validation in major crop species and halophytes. Integrating conserved and species dependent mechanisms with crop centered validation will help convert molecular knowledge into breeding, genome editing, and management strategies for saline agriculture.
Muhammad Usman, Li Wang, Xiaojuan An et al.· Plant Science· 0 citations
This review comprehensively synthesizes recent advances in abiotic stress perception, signal transduction and hormone‐mediated regulation, highlighting their roles in shaping plant stress tolerance and proposes an integrated multi‐scale framework to provide a holistic understanding of drought and salinity stress tolerance and to guide the development of resilient crop systems.
Muhammad Farooq, A. Khan, A. Hassan et al.· Plant Breeding· 1 citation
Biotic stresses (pest feeding, pathogenic fungal/bacterial/viral infection) and diverse abiotic stresses (extreme temperature, drought, waterlogging, saline–alkali soil, heavy metal pollution, nutrient deficiency, UV-B, ozone) severely restrict crop growth and global agricultural yield. Lipids act as core membrane structural constituents and vital secondary signaling messengers, executing multi-layered adaptive balancing functions during cell-type interactive stress acclimation, rather than uniform whole-plant lipid responses. They sustain membrane structural integrity across distinct cell populations, serve as synthetic precursors of bioactive signaling molecules, and trigger cascaded transcriptional and metabolic reprogramming upon environmental stimuli to rebalance physiological status among different cell types. This review systematically summarizes cell-type interactive lipid-mediated plant defense and acclimation balance mechanisms across biotic and abiotic stress contexts. We elaborate the biological functions of fatty acids, phospholipids, galactolipids, sphingolipids and their derivatives (jasmonate, salicylic acid, phosphatidic acid, oxylipin) in stress signal transduction and antioxidant defense and strictly distinguish two categories of lipid changes under all stress types: active adaptive lipid remodeling and passive stress-induced lipid oxidative damage. Key contents include stress-triggered cell-type-specific membrane lipid remodeling, the hierarchical transcriptional regulatory network mediated by WRI1, LEC1, PHR, MADS and other transcription factors governing oil metabolism, as well as crosstalk between lipid metabolism and compartmentalized reactive oxygen species (reactive oxygen species (ROS)) signaling. We further compare conserved lipid-regulatory modules and species-specific divergent responses across model plants and economic oilseed crops, integrating state-of-the-art targeted/untargeted lipidomics, single-cell spatial lipidomics and multi-omics joint breeding strategies to improve multi-stress tolerance in oilseed crops. By consolidating global research progress up to 2025, including the two latest 2026 cross-species meta-analysis reviews, this review provides systematic theoretical support and operable multi-level technical frameworks for genetic engineering targeting conserved lipid pathways to breed stress-resilient high-oil crop germplasm, and highlights reliable lipid stress biomarker screening as a promising translational research direction.
