Nanotechnology-Enabled Plant Stress Tolerance under Climate Change: Mechanisms, Transformations, and Sustainability Implications

Global agriculture is seriously threatened by climate change due to abiotic stresses. Various studies have reported that, between 2020 and 2025, climatic stresses reduce crop yields by up to 70%. Salinity affects almost one billion hectares of land, and increases in CO₂ and extreme temperatures alter biological processes in plants. Plant cells and tissues synthesized excessive concentrations of reactive oxygen species (ROS) under stress conditions. The survival of a plant is critically disrupted because of this increased synthesis of ROS. Nanotechnology is intended to help improve how plants perform under climate stresses (and many studies in the past ten years suggest that it can do just that). This study presents recent progress in drought, salinity, and extreme temperature stress adaptation strategies via nanotechnology. This review has categorized different nanoparticles (NPs), such as ZnO, SiO₂, AgNPs, and CeO₂, and how they can be transported into plants to increase nutrient uptake, photosynthesis, and water use efficiency. This study has also demonstrated how these NPs can counteract oxidative stress and how they function at the molecular level. We examined how NPs can fine-tune reactive oxygen species; upregulate antioxidant enzyme systems, such as SOD, CAT, and APX; and upregulate genes related to drought and salinity. This study provides information about the applications of NPs in both beneficial and detrimental ways, with their aggregation and corona formation tendencies being particularly harmful to plants. This study concludes by listing how this can be addressed in the future. • Climate change induces abiotic stress that critically damages plant health and productivity. • The mechanisms of photosynthesis and efficiency of internal metabolic activates critically increased by integration with NPs such as ZnO and SiO₂. • NPs regulate the excessive production of ROS and increase antioxidant activity. • The applications of nanotechnology in agriculture progressively increased crop resilience under climate change.