Plant-driven strategies for mitigating microplastic pollution in agricultural ecosystems

• Synthesizes recent findings on microplastic (MP) sources, pathways, and impacts in agricultural ecosystems. • Identifies plastic mulching, biosolids, compost, wastewater irrigation, and atmospheric deposition as major MP sources in soils. • Highlights microplastics’ effects on soil structure, nutrient cycling, and rhizosphere microbial communities. • Reviews physiological, biochemical, and genetic disruptions in plants caused by MPs, including oxidative stress and altered hormone signaling. • Discusses mitigation strategies such as plastic-degrading microbes, biochar amendments, and plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria. • Stresses the importance of integrated, nature-based solutions combining microbiology, soil science, and sustainable agriculture. • Calls for multidisciplinary approaches, field-based research, and breeding programs for MP-resilient crops. Microplastics (MPs) have become a widespread and novel threat to agriculture by degrading soils, damaging plant productivity and ultimately threatening food security. Research on MP contamination paths through plastic mulching, biosolids, compost, and wastewater irrigation has led to a greater understanding the problem, but the physiological and ecological impacts on plants have not been quantified and explained. MPs affect the biophysical properties of the soils, including the water and nutrients, which impacts impacts their flow to the MP-affected plants. Biophysical changes caused by the MPs to the soils include changes to bulk density, porosity, and hydraulic conductivity. In the rhizosphere, they cause disruption to the microbial networks, suppression of enzymes, and the destabilization of symbiotic relationships, which impacts the plants’ ability to biogoechemically cycle and mitigate stress. MP-affected plants result in reduced germination, depressed photosynthetic productivity, oxidative stress leading to altered carbon distribution, secondary metabolites, and loss of other metabolites. While there are many studies on the microbial and physicochemical approaches to remediation, the plant pathway and approaches to remediation are still largely unexplored and present a novel opportunity to address the problem. Symbiotic microbial consortia associated with root systems will help with enzymatic transformation of aggregating, immobilizing, and in some cases, biochemically transforming MPs. The detoxification capacity of PGPR and rhizosphere biochar are often situational and short-lived. Most importantly, the short-term laboratory studies using pristine MPs and over concentrated MPs will not accurately influence or predict the ecological impact and applicability to the field. This review underscores the need for an integrated, nature-based strategies to combat MP pollution and protect agroecosystem integrity by bridging microbiology, soil science, and sustainable agriculture. Furthermore, a comprehensive understanding of the root system physiology, chemical exudation patterns, and microbial associations has been explored to determine the fate of the MP in deriving implementable plant-driven approaches. Such a framework is necessary to develop resilient self-remediating agroecosystems that can degrade plastic waste while maintaining productive agriculture.