Nanoparticles in climate-resilient agriculture: Biological mechanisms, rhizosphere interactions, and yield enhancement under abiotic stress.

Abstract

Climate change intensifies abiotic stresses that limit crop productivity, requiring innovative strategies to enhance resilience without compromising sustainability. Nanoparticles (NPs) have emerged as potential modulators of plant stress responses by influencing molecular regulation, physiological adaptation, and stress resilience. However, current evidence remains fragmented because studies are dispersed across different NP types, crop species, abiotic stress conditions, and omics platforms, with most investigations conducted under controlled experimental conditions and few integrating molecular responses with agronomic performance. In this study, we synthesize evidence from plant physiology, omics (including transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and soil microbiome analyses), and agronomic studies to provide an integrated conceptual synthesis linking NPs' physicochemical properties with multi-omics reprogramming and yield-related outcomes under abiotic stress. Collectively, the available evidence indicates that NP size, surface charge, composition, and redox activity strongly influence uptake behavior, intracellular interactions, and signaling intensity, thereby shaping coordinated system-level responses rather than isolated modifications in individual genes, proteins, or metabolites. Across abiotic stresses, NPs modulate stress responses through effects on redox homeostasis, hormonal signaling, ion transport, metabolic flexibility, and rhizosphere interactions. However, their effects vary with NP properties, application conditions, plant species, and stress environments, ranging from stress mitigation to growth inhibition. These responses can improve photosynthetic stability, reproductive performance, and resource allocation, contributing to partial recovery of growth and yield under certain stress conditions. Conversely, excessive or poorly controlled NP exposure disrupts redox balance and growth, underscoring the importance of narrow efficacy windows. We further identify key limitations in the existing literature, including dose and crop specificity, short-term experimental designs, limited field validation, and limited mechanistic linkage between multi-omics responses and agronomic performance, highlighting the need for synchronized multi-omics validation. We contend that future advancements require a transition from proof-of-concept demonstrations to predictive, system-level approaches that integrate multi-omics with developmental stage, environmental context, and yield stability. By reframing NPs as context-dependent modulators of stress resilience rather than universal growth enhancers, this review provides a conceptual foundation for their responsible evaluation and potential application in climate-resilient agriculture.