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Integrative approaches to enhancing abiotic stress tolerance in wheat crop through physiological and molecular strategies
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This review pulls together existing research on how wheat, a major food source for billions, copes with stresses like drought, heat, salty soil, and even nanoplastic pollution. It highlights new gene-editing and breeding tools that could help scientists grow tougher wheat crops, which matters for keeping food affordable and available as climate conditions worsen.
Wheat is one of the world’s most important cereal crops, providing essential calories and nutrients for billions of people and playing a vital role in global food security. Its productivity is increasingly threatened by abiotic stresses, including salinity, drought, heavy metal toxicity, temperature extremes, nutrient deficiencies, and emerging environmental contaminants such as nanoplastics. These stresses disrupt plant growth and development by inducing oxidative damage, impairing photosynthesis, disturbing nutrient and water homeostasis, and altering protein synthesis and cellular metabolism. Wheat plants respond through coordinated physiological, biochemical, and molecular mechanisms involving antioxidant defenses, osmotic adjustment, phytohormone signaling, and stress-responsive gene regulation. Recent advances in molecular breeding, including genome-wide association studies (GWAS), genomic selection, multi-omics approaches, and CRISPR/Cas-based genome editing, have accelerated the discovery of stress-responsive genes and quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for improving abiotic stress tolerance in wheat. Unlike previous reviews that examine physiological and molecular aspects separately, this review addresses the lack of an integrated synthesis connecting physiological traits, molecular mechanisms, and breeding strategies for multiple abiotic stresses in wheat. It further highlights emerging breeding technologies and climate-smart approaches, including genomic selection and CRISPR/Cas-based genome editing, to develop high-yielding, stress-resilient wheat cultivars that support sustainable wheat production under changing environmental conditions.
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This review paper pulls together 142 studies to show how microplastic pollution in soil, combined with drought and heat, damages crops at a molecular level—stressing plants in ways that can hurt water absorption and trigger harmful cell damage. This matters because as microplastics and climate extremes both worsen, our food supply faces a growing double threat; the researchers also outline potential fixes, like gene editing and soil-restoring technologies, to help crops become more resilient.
Acquisitive trait strategies enhance resistance in wheat under combined microplastic and water deficit
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Researchers grew two wheat varieties under four conditions — normal, microplastic exposure, water deficit, and both stressors combined — finding that combined stress reduced plant growth by 28–41% depending on drought sensitivity. The drought-tolerant variety coped better by adopting more flexible, resource-acquisitive leaf strategies, suggesting that trait-based crop breeding could help plants withstand the dual threat of microplastic pollution and drought.
Perspective Chapter: Plant Abiotic Stress Factors – Current Challenges of Last Decades and Future Threats
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This review examines major abiotic stress factors affecting plants — including drought, waterlogging, extreme temperatures, heavy metals, and pollutants — with a focus on molecular-level effects and emerging threats from microplastics, nanoplastics, and nanoparticles. The authors evaluate current understanding of plant stress responses and highlight micro- and nanoplastics as novel stressors introduced by rapid industrialisation that plants have not encountered through evolutionary history.
Interacting Effects of Heat and Nanoplastics Affect Wheat (Triticum turgidum L.) Seedling Growth and Physiology
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Researchers exposed wheat seedlings to polystyrene nanoplastics under both normal (25°C) and elevated (35°C) temperature conditions to test whether heat stress and nanoplastic exposure interact to worsen plant health. They found that the combination of heat and nanoplastics caused greater oxidative stress and growth impairment than either stressor alone, suggesting that climate change could amplify the agricultural damage caused by nanoplastic pollution. This matters because global warming and plastic pollution are both worsening simultaneously, and crops are caught in the crossfire.
Durum wheat under plastic pressure: genotype-specific adaptation to polystyrene nanoplastics
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Scientists found that tiny plastic particles (nanoplastics) in soil can stress durum wheat—the crop used to make pasta—but how much damage they cause depends on the wheat's genetics. One variety handled the plastic exposure well, keeping its nutrient levels and energy production stable, while another variety struggled with nutrient imbalances and cell damage. This matters because as plastic pollution builds up in farmland, it could affect crop nutrition and yields, meaning future food security may depend on breeding wheat varieties that can better withstand this contamination.
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