Unveiling the impact of heat and drought stress on plant reproductive tissues

Reproductive development in plants is highly sensitive to heat and drought stress, which are exacerbated by climate change and pose significant threats to global crop productivity. This review synthesizes current knowledge on the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying plant responses to heat and drought stress during reproductive stages, with an emphasis on the critical role of transcriptomic approaches. Traditional bulk RNA methods have revealed extensive gene regulatory networks activated during stress, highlighting the complexity of responses across developmental phases and species-specific adaptations. However, these methods obscure cellular and tissue heterogeneity, limiting the resolution of key regulatory processes. Recent advances in single-cell and single-nucleus RNA sequencing have unraveled the spatiotemporal dynamics and post-transcriptional regulation underpinning stress resilience at unprecedented resolution, particularly in vegetative tissues. While the application of these advanced technologies to reproductive organs remains little explored, leaving important gaps in understanding the mechanisms driving stress-induced male sterility. We propose an integrative framework linking early stress sensing in vegetative tissues to transcriptional and post-transcriptional reprogramming in reproductive organs, highlighting the role of single-cell and multi-omics approaches in resolving tissue-specific regulatory mechanisms that determine fertility under combined heat and drought stress. We argue that future research should focus on integrating multi-omics datasets and expanding single-cell analyses in reproductive tissues to characterize translational control mechanisms and the epigenetic memory of stress. Such integrative efforts are imperative for identifying stage-specific protective strategies and for developing climate-resilient crops with enhanced reproductive success under heat and drought stress.