Assessment of seed priming for mitigating abiotic stress and improving growth of horticultural crops: a review

Plants are increasingly subjected to extreme abiotic stresses such as temperatures, elevated salinity, water scarcity, waterlogging, and other potentially detrimental environmental circumstances, thus posing a significant threat to growth and agricultural productivity. Seed priming has gained considerable attention as a pre-sowing treatment to enhance plant resilience to these environmental changes. Treating seeds with seed priming agents involves pre-conditioning to enhance that improve seedling vigour and stress tolerance without initiating full germination. Although seed priming has demonstrated potential in controlled settings, its effectiveness in field conditions remains largely unexamined. This review meticulously analyses the different seed priming techniques utilised in horticultural crops and their significance in alleviating abiotic stress. By integrating conventional and innovative priming approaches, the study presents a novel comparative perspective on how these treatments influence germination, metabolism, and antioxidant defence mechanisms specific to horticultural plants. Importantly, it identifies critical research gaps, such as the lack of field-based validation, inconsistency in priming protocols, and limited understanding of the molecular and epigenetic bases of stress tolerance. The novelty of this review lies in its crop-specific analysis and cross-comparison of emerging priming technologies, which collectively offer new insights into improving crop establishment and productivity under variable environmental conditions. It also discusses the potential integration of seed priming into sustainable horticultural and climate-resilient farming systems. In summary, future investigations should concentrate on fine-tuning priming protocols, assessing their long-term impacts on crop performance, and investigating their incorporation into sustainable agricultural strategies to address challenges posed by climate change.