Autophagy and stress tolerance in plants: the central role of ATG18—a review

post-translational modifications, it dynamically regulates autophagy to clear damaged components, recycle nutrients, and enhance disease resistance. It provides a theoretical framework for elucidating plant resistance and suggests strategies such as promoter editing, allele pyramiding, and CRISPR-mediated expression tuning to exploit ATG18 for breeding crops with combined disease resistance and abiotic-stress tolerance, offering valuable perspectives for agricultural advancement.