Nanoparticle-Mediated Phytohormone Interplay: Advancing Plant Resilience to Abiotic Stresses

Nanoparticles (NPs) have shown promising potential to improve plant resilience against various abiotic stresses like drought, salinity, heat, cold etc. by modulating key phytohormonal pathways. While previous studies have explored the efficacy of different NPs in alleviating individual stresses, a critical analysis summarizing the current understanding of NPs-phytohormone interconnections is lacking. This review comprehensively surveys recent advances in elucidating the crosstalk between NPs and major plant hormones like abscisic acid, auxins, salicylic acid, jasmonic acid, cytokinins, ethylene, strigolactones and brassinosteroids etc. involved in abiotic stress responses. Both biogenic and chemically engineered NPs are covered. The current understanding of the mechanisms underlying NP-triggered phytohormone signature changes are discussed. Critical knowledge gaps such as lack of field scale evaluations are identified. Finally, future prospects include elucidating molecular mechanisms more deeply using multi-omics approaches, evaluation under field conditions in diverse environmental contexts and genotypes, long-term risk assessments, and development of targeted multi-component NP formulations. This review assimilates the current status and future outlook of the emerging field of NP-phytohormone interplay engineering for sustainable agriculture solutions.