ABSTRACT
Agriculture is directly linked with human life by providing food and nutrition for growth and development. Presently, the food production system is facing manifold challenges such as climate change, degradation of soil health, declining groundwater table etc., threatening food security and agricultural sustainability. Plant propagation materials such as seeds are the necessary inputs in agriculture. However, during the developmental stages, seeds face many biotic and abiotic stresses including heavy metal stress (HMs), salinity and drought which negatively affect seed vigour, germination, emergence, establishment and ultimately crop yield. The seed germination process is one of the vital stages under abiotic stresses, mainly salinity and drought, because at germination, it does not have any defence mechanism. Various techniques have been evolved to tackle the above challenges; however, seed priming is one of the most attractive approaches to alleviate the seed from several environmental stresses. Seed priming comprises hydropriming, osmopriming, solid matrix priming, biopriming and nanopriming. Among all, nanopriming is one of the novel and innovative techniques to enhance the ability for stress tolerance in seeds. Seed priming using nanoparticles (NPs) improves seed germination, the emergence and subsequent plant growth and development by activation of various physicochemical processes in the seed. This chapter emphasizes an overview of recent development and research findings on seed nanopriming and the possible mechanism of plant stress tolerance augmentation against various stresses.
