ABSTRACT
Globally, abiotic stresses (drought, heat, chilling, salinity, heavy metals toxicity, water logging, eroded soils and nutrient imbalance) have posed a serious challenge to crop production systems. The changing climate scenario and global warming have further aggravated the intensity and frequency of abiotic stress (AS) incidences which have reduced crop yield and quality. Seed priming (SP) which entails pre-sowing seed treatment with a priming agent might serve as a biologically viable strategy to ameliorate adverse effects of sub-optimal environments. Different seed priming agents applied as nanoparticles (NPs) have the potential to exhibit improved efficacy in terms of mitigating the deleterious impacts of stressful environments. This chapter synthesizes the latest research on the deleterious effects of abiotic stresses on the morphological and physiological functioning of crop plants along with summarizing plant responses to unfavourable growth conditions. Moreover, recent advances in NPs’ role in improving plant survival under AS for achieving better yields and nutritional quality of field crops have been objectively elaborated.
