Involvement of nanoparticles in mitigating plant's abiotic stress

Abiotic stress globally has imposed the sternest environmental issues which enforce a significant impact on agricultural food production. Particularly, salinity, drought, heavy metal, and extreme high and low temperature are the principal components of abiotic stresses. The majority of the agricultural land is altered by the stresses and impacted by the reduction of production. An environmental stress response is internally governed by intricate biochemical and molecular signal transduction events, that act in an orchestrated manner for determining the tolerance or sensitivity of the plants. With exposure to abiotic stress, plants respond by reprogramming the interconnected defense networks and metabolic pathways. The variety of agrarian, physiological practices and genetic engineering methods are adapted for promoting plant stress adaptability. With the advent of nanotechnology, its application in agriculture has emerged as a valuable tool to reach the goal of sustainable food production worldwide. Nanoparticles possess unique physicochemical properties which allow them to interact with biological systems in a specific manner in terms of size, large surface area, surface charge, etc. In this regard, numerous studies have been carried out to study the efficacious role of nanoparticles in strengthening plant stress resilience. In this review, we will discuss the molecular mechanisms governing the nanoparticle-mediated stress response to increase the potentiality of cultivated plants.