Decoding phytohormone signaling in plant stress physiology: Insights, challenges, and future directions

Phytohormones are pivotal regulators of plant stress physiology, orchestrating adaptive responses to environmental challenges and ensuring crop resilience. This comprehensive review explores the intricate signaling networks through which phytohormones operate, emphasizing their critical contributions to stress adaptation. Highlighting the complex crosstalk and feedback mechanisms among multiple hormones (viz. Abscisic acid (ABA), Jasmonic acid (JA), Ethylene, Cytokinin, Gibberellic acid (GA) and Brassinosteroids) and pathways, the review elucidates the role of phytohormones in shaping stress responses at various regulatory levels, from transcriptional to epigenetic regulation. Despite significant progress, deciphering phytohormone signaling networks presents formidable challenges, including inherent complexity and technical constraints. Addressing these hurdles requires interdisciplinary collaboration and innovative methodologies. The review outlines promising research directions aimed at unraveling additional layers of hormonal regulation and enhancing our predictive capabilities for engineering stress-tolerant plants. Overall, this review highlights the pivotal role of phytohormones in plant stress physiology and their implications for sustainable agriculture and food security. • The review identifies novel signaling pathways through which phytohormones mediate stress responses in plants. • It reveals extensive crosstalk between different phytohormone pathways involved in stress adaptation. • The review uncovers new potential targets for the development of stress-tolerant crop varieties. • The review highlights significant gaps in current knowledge and proposes future research directions to address these challenges.