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• Stressors negatively impact seed germination, plant growth, and productivity, resulting in substantial yield losses. • Plant-associated endophytic microbes, which play a vital role in helping plants adapt to challenging environmental conditions. • Endophytes as an innovative, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly strategy to improve plant resilience against drought and salinity. • Endophyte-primed seeds, a significant advancement in climate-smart agriculture, offering a practical solution to ensuring food security. Climate change, driven by both natural processes and human activities, disrupts crop production patterns, threatens global food security, and intensifies abiotic stresses in agricultural systems. Our comprehensive bibliometric analysis of research articles published in the Scopus database from 2014 to 2024 reveals that drought and salinity are the most prevalent abiotic stressors induced by climate change. These stressors negatively impact seed germination, plant growth, and productivity, resulting in substantial yield losses. To address these challenges, there is an urgent need for sustainable and economically viable strategies to enhance crop resilience and adaptability to abiotic stresses. One promising solution is the use of plant-associated endophytic microbes, which play a vital role in helping plants adapt to challenging environmental conditions. This review highlights seed biopriming with stress-adapted, growth-promoting endophytes as an innovative, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly strategy to improve plant resilience against drought and salinity. We explore the morpho-physiological, transcriptional, metabolic, and biochemical responses of plants to these stresses and examine the role of endophyte-mediated seed priming in mitigating the impacts of drought and salinity. Key mechanisms discussed include seed germination and growth promotion, phytohormone biosynthesis, osmotic adjustment, antioxidant modulation, and the upregulation of stress-responsive genes, such as those involved in redox signalling, mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathways, and interactions with other plant hormone networks. The potential of endophyte-primed seeds to enhance plant tolerance under stress conditions represents a significant advancement in climate-smart agriculture, offering a practical solution to ensuring food security in the face of climate change.
Harsonowati et al. (Thu,) studied this question.