Hormone priming and metabolic engineering of phytohormone crosstalk in rice under combined biotic and abiotic stresses: a multi-omics perspective for climate-resilient crop development
Aug 2026· Frontiers in Plant Science· 0 citations· 126 references
TL;DR
This synthesis provides a framework for translating mechanistic hormonal insights into field-applicable cultivars to ensure global food security and proposes a systems-level roadmap for developing climate-resilient rice cultivars capable of maintaining yield stability across a volatile combinatorial stress landscape.
Abstract
Rice (
Oryza sativa
L.) is the caloric backbone for more than half of humanity, yet it remains one of the most vulnerable crops to the simultaneous biotic and abiotic stresses exacerbated by climate change. Phytohormone priming and the complex crosstalk networks governed by transcription factor hubs like
WRKY
,
MYB
, and
NAC
serve as the central adaptive mechanism for stress resilience. This review synthesizes how multi-omics integration, including spatial and single-cell transcriptomics, is resolving the molecular architecture of hormonal priming and epigenetic stress memory. We critically evaluate advanced metabolic engineering and genome-editing strategies such as CRISPR-Cas9, base/prime editing, and synthetic gene circuits that enable precision modifications to decouple stress tolerance from historical yield penalties. Furthermore, we discuss the emerging roles of microbiome-assisted priming via synthetic consortia and the application of artificial intelligence and digital twins (continuously updated computational models of crop physiology) for predictive stress management. By integrating these diverse technological pillars, we propose a systems-level roadmap for developing climate-resilient rice cultivars capable of maintaining yield stability across a volatile combinatorial stress landscape. This synthesis provides a framework for translating mechanistic hormonal insights into field-applicable cultivars to ensure global food security.
By connecting stress biology with translational breeding, this review provides a framework for developing climate-resilient Brassica cultivars by synthesizing recent progress in abiotic stress tolerance from physiological, genetic, epigenetic, and multi-omics perspectives.
S. Peng, Mingliang Jiang, Xiaonan Li· Horticulturae· 0 citations
A roadmap for predictive reprogramming of flavonoid networks under combined stress and the development of crops with improved resilience to increasingly complex environmental conditions is outlined.
Aiman Hina, A. Abbasi, Amna Chaudhry et al.· Frontiers in Plant Science· 0 citations
Rice (Oryza sativa) is among the most important staple food crops in the world, serving as a main source of food security for approximately one-half of the world's population. Nevertheless, its cultivation is becoming compromised due to climate change, as repeated drought and saline soils, along with erratic temperatures, pose heavy restrictions on its yield. Traditional breeding and genetic engineering have contributed to enhancing crop performance; however, they are still constrained by the complex stress-responsive networks and by the time taken to develop tolerant cultivars. In order to overcome these challenges, technologies on the horizon, synthetic genomics and epigenetic engineering, are becoming game-changers in crop science. Synthetic genomics permits the refactoring and partial reassembly of plant genomes, thereby allowing new gene circuits to be built in, synthetic chromosomes to be installed, and multiplex editing via CRISPR-mediated alterations to increase drought tolerance or salinity resistance or boost photosynthesis in rice. Concurrently, epigenetic changes such as DNA methylation and histone modification, as well as non-coding RNA-mediated regulation, can impose a more dynamic and reversible layer of control on gene expression by modulating stress responses while leaving the actual DNA sequence unaltered. Emerging evidence indicates that certain epigenetic marks are capable of being 'remembered' across generations and could influence long-term resilience to stress. This review emphasizes the use of synthetic genomics-based epigenetic regulation as a new horizon in climate-resilient rice improvement.
R. Ahmed, R. Sultan· Journal of Health and Biolog...· 0 citations
A unified framework that merges mechanistic discovery, microbiome-assisted breeding, soil and water management and systems-level predictive modelling is proposed, essential for developing climate-resilient crops to sustain dryland agriculture.
Muhammad Adil, Isma Gul, Siqi Lu et al.· Plant, Cell and Environment· 0 citations
This framework charts pathways for optimizing the memory yield equation by integrating molecular circuitry with field-applicable priming, and explicitly identifies critical knowledge gaps, including the limited direct measurements of proline biosynthetic enzyme kinetics in primed versus unprimed maize and the largely uncharacterized phosphorylation states of PEPC under priming conditions.
Bushra Quyoom, A. A. Lone, Z. Dar et al.· Frontiers in Plant Physiolog...· 0 citations
This review systematizes current knowledge on the types of CAS, their interactions, and their impacts on plant physiological, molecular, and microbiological processes, and extrapolates from established mechanisms to propose how microbes may mitigate combined stresses.
O. Lastochkina, A. Avalbaev, A. Lubyanova et al.· Applied Biochemistry and Mic...· 0 citations
