Under an appropriate exposure dose, AgNPs provide positive impacts on rice tillering, yield, grain metabolite profile, and soil bacteria.
Seeds are facing harsher environments due to the changing climate. Improving seeds' stress resilience is critical to reduce yield loss. Here, we propose that using ROS-generating nanoparticles (NPs) to prestimulate seeds would enhance the stress resilience of seeds and seedlings through triggering stress/immune responses. We examined this hypothesis by exposing AgNPs-primed rice (Oryza sativa L.) seeds under salt conditions (NaCl). The results showed that primed seeds exhibit accelerated germination speed, increased seedling vigor (from 22.5 to 47.6), biomass (11%), and root length (83%) compared to seeds with hydropriming treatment. Multiomics (metabolomics and transcriptomics) analyses reveal that AgNPs-priming triggered metabolic and transcriptional reprogramming in rice seeds. Signaling metabolites, such as salicylic acid, niacinamide, and glycerol-3-phosphate, dramatically increased upon AgNPs-priming. KEGG pathway analysis reveals that AgNPs-priming activated stress signaling and defense related pathways, such as plant hormone signal transduction, glutathione metabolism, flavone and flavonol biosynthesis, MAPK signaling pathway, and plant−pathogen interaction. These metabolic and transcriptional changes indicate that AgNPs-priming triggered stress/immune responses. More importantly, this "stress memory" can last weeks, providing protection to rice seedlings against salt stress and rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae). Overall, we show that prestimulated seeds with ROS-generating AgNPs not only enable faster and better germination under stress conditions, but also increase seedling resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses. This simple nanobiostimulant-based strategy may contribute to sustainable agriculture by maintaining agricultural production and reducing the use of pesticides.
Under a changing climate, cultivating climate-resilient crops will be critical to maintaining food security. Here, we propose the application of reactive oxygen species (ROS)-generating nanoparticles as nanobiostimulants to trigger stress/immune responses and subsequently increase the stress resilience of plants. We established three regimens of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs)-based “stress training”: seed training (ST), leaf training (LT), and combined seed and leaf training (SLT). Trained rice seedlings were then exposed to either rice blast fungus (Magnaporthe oryzae) or chilling stress (10 °C). The results show that all “stress training” regimes, particularly SLT, significantly enhanced the resistance of rice against the fungal pathogen (lesion size reduced by 82% relative to untrained control). SLT also significantly enhanced rice tolerance to cold stress. The mechanisms for the enhanced resilience were investigated with metabolomics and transcriptomics, which show that “stress training” induced considerable metabolic and transcriptional reprogramming in rice leaves. AgNPs boosted ROS-activated stress signaling pathways by oxidative post-translational modifications of stress-related kinases, hormones, and transcriptional factors (TFs). These signaling pathways subsequently modulated the expression of defense genes, including specialized metabolites (SMs) biosynthesis genes, cell membrane lipid metabolism genes, and pathogen–plant interaction genes. Importantly, results showed that the “stress memory” can be transferred transgenerationally, conferring offspring seeds with improved seed germination and seedling vigor. This may provide an epigenetic breeding strategy to fortify stress resilience of crops. This nanobiostimulant-based stress training strategy will increase yield vigor against a changing climate and will contribute to sustainable agriculture by reducing agrochemical use.
Under a changing climate, cultivating climate-resilient crops will be critical to maintaining food security. Here, we propose the application of ROS-generating nanoparticles as nanobiostimulants to trigger stress/immune responses, and subsequently increase the stress resilience of plants. We established three regimens of AgNPs-based “stress training”: seed priming (SP), leaf priming (LP), and combined seed- and leaf- priming (SLP). Trained rice seedlings were then exposed to either rice blast fungus (M. oryzae.) or chilling stress (10 ºC). The results show that all “stress training” regimes, particularly SLP significantly enhanced the resistance of rice against the fungal pathogen (lesion size reduced by 82% relative to un-trained control). SLP training also significantly enhanced rice tolerance to cold stress. Under cold conditions, SLP training significantly increased leaf biomass by 35% compared to controls. The mechanisms for the enhanced resilience were investigated with metabolomic and transcriptomic profiling, which show that “stress training” induced considerable metabolic and transcriptional reprogramming in rice leaves. AgNPs-boosted ROS activated stress signaling pathways by oxidative post-translational modifications of stress related kinases, hormones, and transcriptional factors (TFs). These signaling pathways subsequently modulated the expression of defense genes, including specialized metabolites (SMs) biosynthesis genes, cell membrane lipid metabolism genes, and pathogen-plant interaction genes. These AgNPs-triggered metabolic and transcriptional reprogramming enable rice plants to mount a more rapid and intense response to future stresses. This nanobiostimulant-based strategy for increasing the stress resilience of crops will increase yield vigor against a changing climate and will contribute to sustainable agriculture by reducing agrochemical use.
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