Mitigating abiotic stress in crop plants using nanoformulations for climate-resilient agriculture

Abiotic stresses, particularly drought, salinity, heat and heavy metal toxicity, increasingly constrain crop productivity and threaten sustainable food production. Although nanoformulations have demonstrated considerable potential for stress mitigation, the evidence remains fragmented across nanoparticle types, crops, stress conditions and application doses and a critical synthesis linking dose response, underlying mechanisms, multi-omics evidence, field performance and safety is still lacking. This review critically synthesises advances in nanoformulations for abiotic stress management, emphasising dose-dependent responses, physiological and biochemical mechanisms, molecular regulation, multi-omics insights, environmental implications and agricultural applications. Nanoformulations are broadly categorised into metal and metal-oxide, silicon-based, carbon-based, biopolymeric and composite or smart systems to provide a focused assessment of their functional roles. Their stressalleviating effects are primarily associated with enhanced antioxidant defence, osmotic adjustment, photosynthetic protection, ion homeostasis, nutrient utilisation and stress responsive signalling. Quantitative evidence highlights their potential; for example, foliar application of zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO NPs) at 100 mg L-1 increased grain yield by 42.2 % and root dry weight by 63.1 % in salt-stressed wheat under experimental conditions. Multi-omics approaches integrating transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and ionomics are increasingly revealing NP–plant interactions and stress-response networks. Their convergence with artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted precision agriculture could further support prediction of stress responses and optimisation of nanoformulation dose, timing and crop-specific application. However, dose standardisation, multi-season and multi-location field validation, NP transformation and persistence, soil microbiome effects, food-chain transfer and harmonised safety assessment remain major challenges. Future research should integrate smart nanoformulations, multi-omics and AI-driven precision deployment with rigorous field and environmental safety validation. Nanoformulations therefore represent a next-generation strategy for precise, sustainable and climate-resilient agriculture.