Chapter 15 - Seed priming to enhance salt and drought stress tolerance in plants: advances and prospects

Abstract

Under natural field conditions, plants are often exposed to a variety of abiotic stresses that negatively affect the performance of crop plants. Among these stresses, drought and salinity stresses cause severe reductions in crop growth and productivity worldwide. Presently, different approaches are being used to ameliorate the detrimental effects of drought and salinity. Seed priming has emerged as an effective and practical approach to induce the plant tolerance against different stress factors including drought and salinity. In seed priming, seeds are allowed to imbibe in low water potential that permit partial imbibition without radicle protrusion. Priming of seed enables the faster and better germination in plants under stressful conditions. Different cellular and metabolic events are involved in induction of drought and salinity tolerance after seed priming. Primed seeds can activate the signal pathways during the early growth stage and triggered the faster stress response. Faster emergence and uniform stand establishment in primed seeds ultimately increases the crop productivity under drought and salinity conditions. In this chapter, we discuss a wide range of seed priming techniques including hydropriming, osmopriming, chemical priming, biopriming, hormonal priming, and nutrient priming, used to enhance the drought and salinity stress tolerance in plants.