Seed priming of plants aiding in drought stress tolerance and faster recovery: a review

Abstract

Drought stress exposure adversely affects plant growth and productivity. Various seed priming techniques are experimented to mitigate the adverse effect of drought stress on plant performance. It is a low-cost and sustainable technology that proved to be of immense potential to enhance drought tolerance and increase crop productivity. Drought episodes are followed by recovery through rain or irrigation and help the plants to recuperate from the damages caused by drought stress. The severity of drought-associated damages determines the recovery kinetics of plants. Under the recurrent cycle of drought events, recovery kinetics has immense importance in predicting the stress tolerance potential and survival status of a plant. Many processes like DNA damage repair, de-novo synthesis of nucleic acids and proteins, osmotic adjustment through the accumulation of osmolytes, the potential activity of antioxidant machinery occurring during seed priming play a significant role during recovery from drought stress. Alleviation of the severity of drought stress through the accumulation of osmolytes, the augmented activity of antioxidant machinery, improved photosynthetic performance, and the upregulated expression of stress-responsive genes attributed by seed priming will complement the recovery from drought stress. Although the beneficial effects of seed priming on drought tolerance are well explored, priming influenced recovery mechanism has not been well explored. There is a lacuna in the field of research related to the beneficial effects of seed priming for recovery from drought stress, and that is the focus of this paper.