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Current approaches for accurate identification, classification, and quantification of biotic and abiotic stresses in crop research and production are predominantly visual and require specialized training. However, such techniques are hindered by subjectivity resulting from inter- and intrarater cognitive variability. This translates to erroneous decisions and a significant waste of resources. Here, we demonstrate a machine learning framework’s ability to identify and classify a diverse set of foliar stresses in soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.] with remarkable accuracy. We also present an explanation mechanism, using the top-K high-resolution feature maps that isolate the visual symptoms used to make predictions. This unsupervised identification of visual symptoms provides a quantitative measure of stress severity, allowing for identification (type of foliar stress), classification (low, medium, or high stress), and quantification (stress severity) in a single framework without detailed symptom annotation by experts. We reliably identified and classified several biotic (bacterial and fungal diseases) and abiotic (chemical injury and nutrient deficiency) stresses by learning from over 25,000 images. The learned model is robust to input image perturbations, demonstrating viability for high-throughput deployment. We also noticed that the learned model appears to be agnostic to species, seemingly demonstrating an ability of transfer learning. The availability of an explainable model that can consistently, rapidly, and accurately identify and quantify foliar stresses would have significant implications in scientific research, plant breeding, and crop production. The trained model could be deployed in mobile platforms (e.g., unmanned air vehicles and automated ground scouts) for rapid, large-scale scouting or as a mobile application for real-time detection of stress by farmers and researchers.

Main conclusionEnvironmental-friendly techniques based on plant stress memory, cross-stress tolerance, and seed priming help sustainable agriculture by mitigating negative effects of dehydration stress.The frequently uneven rainfall distribution caused by global warming will lead to more irregular and multiple abiotic stresses, such as heat stress, dehydration stress, cold stress or the combination of these stresses. Dehydration stress is one of the major environmental factors affecting the survival rate and productivity of plants. Hence, there is an urgent need to develop improved resilient varieties. Presently, technologies based on plant stress memory, cross-stress tolerance and priming of seeds represent fruitful and promising areas of future research and applied agricultural science. In this review, we will provide an overview of plant drought stress memory from physiological, biochemical, molecular and epigenetic perspectives. Drought priming-induced cross-stress tolerance to cold and heat stress will be discussed and the application of seed priming will be illustrated for different species.

Current technologies have changed biology into a data-intensive field and significantly increased our understanding of signal transduction pathways in plants. However, global defense signaling networks in plants have not been established yet. Considering the apparent intricate nature of signaling mechanisms in plants (due to their sessile nature), studying the points at which different signaling pathways converge, rather than the branches, represents a good start to unravel global plant signaling networks. In this regard, growing evidence shows that the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) is one of the most common plant responses to different stresses, representing a point at which various signaling pathways come together. In this review, the complex nature of plant stress signaling networks will be discussed. An emphasis on different signaling players with a specific attention to ROS as the primary source of the signaling battery in plants will be presented. The interactions between ROS and other signaling components, e.g., calcium, redox homeostasis, membranes, G-proteins, MAPKs, plant hormones, and transcription factors will be assessed. A better understanding of the vital roles ROS are playing in plant signaling would help innovate new strategies to improve plant productivity under the circumstances of the increasing severity of environmental conditions and the high demand of food and energy worldwide.

Cytochrome P450s (CYPs) are the largest enzyme family involved in NADPH- and/or O2-dependent hydroxylation reactions across all the domains of life. In plants and animals, CYPs play a central role in the detoxification of xenobiotics. In addition to this function, CYPs act as versatile catalysts and play a crucial role in the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, antioxidants, and phytohormones in higher plants. The molecular and biochemical processes catalyzed by CYPs have been well characterized, however, the relationship between the biochemical process catalyzed by CYPs and its effect on several plant functions was not well established. The advent of next-generation sequencing opened new avenues to unravel the involvement of CYPs in several plant functions such as plant stress response. The expression of several CYP genes are regulated in response to environmental stresses, and they also play a prominent role in the crosstalk between abiotic and biotic stress responses. CYPs have an enormous potential to be used as a candidate for engineering crop species resilient to biotic and abiotic stresses. The objective of this review is to summarize the latest research on the role of CYPs in plant stress response.

Understanding how plants cope with stress and the intricate mechanisms thereby used to adapt and survive environmental imbalances comprise one of the most powerful tools for modern agriculture. Interdisciplinary studies suggest that knowledge in how plants perceive, transduce and respond to abiotic stresses are a meaningful way to design engineered crops since the manipulation of basic characteristics leads to physiological remodeling for plant adaption to different environments. Herein, we discussed the main pathways involved in stress-sensing, signal transduction and plant adaption, highlighting biochemical, physiological and genetic events involved in abiotic stress responses. Finally, we have proposed a list of practice markers for studying plant responses to multiple stresses, highlighting how plant molecular biology, phenotyping and genetic engineering interconnect for creating superior crops.

Sunlight provides the necessary energy for plant growth via photosynthesis but high light and particular its integral ultraviolet (UV) part causes stress potentially leading to serious damage to DNA, proteins, and other cellular components. Plants show adaptation to environmental stresses, sometimes referred to as \"plant memory.\" There is growing evidence that plants memorize exposure to biotic or abiotic stresses through epigenetic mechanisms at the cellular level. UV target genes such as CHALCONE SYNTHASE (CHS) respond immediately to UV treatment and studies of the recently identified UV-B receptor UV RESISTANCE LOCUS 8 (UVR8) confirm the expedite nature of UV signaling. Considering these findings, an UV memory seems redundant. However, several lines of evidence suggest that plants may develop an epigenetic memory of UV and light stress, but in comparison to other abiotic stresses there has been relatively little investigation. Here we summarize the state of knowledge about acclimation and adaptation of plants to UV light and discuss the possibility of chromatin based epigenetic memory.

Stress granules (SGs) are dynamic membrane-less condensates transiently assembled through liquid–liquid phase separation (LLPS) in response to stress. SGs display a biphasic architecture constituted of core and shell phases. The core is a conserved SG fraction fundamental for its assembly and consists primarily of proteins with intrinsically disordered regions and RNA-binding domains, along with translational-related proteins. The shell fraction contains specific SG components that differ among species, cell type, and developmental stage and might include metabolic enzymes, receptors, transcription factors, untranslated mRNAs, and small molecules. SGs assembly positively correlates with stalled translation associated with stress responses playing a pivotal role during the adaptive cellular response, post-stress recovery, signaling, and metabolic rewire. After stress, SG disassembly releases mRNA and proteins to the cytoplasm to reactivate translation and reassume cell growth and development. However, under severe stress conditions or aberrant cellular behavior, SG dynamics are severely disturbed, affecting cellular homeostasis and leading to cell death in the most critical cases. The majority of research on SGs has focused on yeast and mammals as model organism. Nevertheless, the study of plant SGs has attracted attention in the last few years. Genetics studies and adapted techniques from other non-plant models, such as affinity capture coupled with multi-omics analyses, have enriched our understanding of SG composition in plants. Despite these efforts, the investigation of plant SGs is still an emerging field in plant biology research. In this review, we compile and discuss the accumulated progress of plant SGs regarding their composition, organization, dynamics, regulation, and their relation to other cytoplasmic foci. Lastly, we will explore the possible connections among the most exciting findings of SGs from mammalian, yeast, and plants, which might help provide a complete view of the biology of plant SGs in the future.

Background Abscisic acid (ABA) plays a central role in regulating plant responses to abiotic stress. It orchestrates a complex regulatory network that facilitates the transition from growth to defense. Understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying this ABA-induced transition from growth to defense is essential for elucidating plant adaptive strategies under environmental stress conditions. Results In this study, we used a refined dynamic network biomarker (DNB) approach to quantitatively identify the critical transition signal (CTS) and characterize the regulated stochasticity during the ABA-induced transition from growth to defense in Arabidopsis thaliana . By integrating high-resolution time-series RNA-seq data with dynamic network analysis, we identified a set of DNB genes that serve as key molecular regulators of this transition. The critical transition phase was identified precisely at the ninth time point (6 h after treatment), which marks the crucial switch from a growth-dominated to a defense -oriented state. Gene Ontology (GO) enrichment analysis revealed a significant overrepresentation of defense-related biological processes, while STRING network analysis revealed strong functional interactions between DNB genes and differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and highlighted key regulatory hubs. In particular, key hub genes such as PIF4 , TPS8 , NIA1 , and HSP90 -5 were identified as potential master regulators of ABA-mediated defense activation, highlighting their importance for plant stress adaptation. Conclusions By integrating a network-driven transcriptomic analysis, this study provides new insights into the molecular basis of ABA-induced transitions from growth to defense. The identification of CTS provides a new perspective on regulated stochasticity in plant stress responses and provides a conceptual framework for improving crop stress resistance. In addition, the establishment of a comprehensive database of ABA-responsive defense genes represents a valuable resource for future research on plant adaptation and resilience.

Traditionally, herbivorous insects are thought to exhibit enhanced performance and outbreak dynamics on water-stressed host plants due to induced changes in plant physiology. Recent experimental studies, however, provide mixed support for this historical view. To test the plant-stress hypothesis (PSH), we employed two methods (the traditional vote-counting approach and meta-analysis) to assess published studies that investigated insect responses to experimentally induced water-deficit in plants. For insects, we examined how water deficit affects survivorship, fecundity, density, relative growth rate, and oviposition preference. Responses were analyzed by major feeding guild (sap-feeding insects and chewing insects) and for the subguilds of sap-feeders (phloem, mesophyll, and xylem feeders) and chewing insects (free-living chewers, borers, leaf miners, and gall-formers). Both vote counting and meta-analysis found strong negative effects of water stress on the performance of sap-feeding insects at large and on members of the phloem- and mesophyll-feeding subguilds in particular. Both analytical techniques demonstrated a nonsignificant response for chewing insects at large due to the offsetting effects of water stress on the different subguilds. For example, our analyses found consistent positive responses for borers, negative responses for gall-formers, and inconsistent responses for free-living species and leaf miners. Overall, our analyses strongly challenge the historical view that herbivorous insects exhibit elevated performance and outbreak dynamics on water-stressed plants. Rather, there is widespread evidence that many phytophagous insects, especially sap-feeders, are adversely affected by continuous water stress. Despite enhanced foliar nitrogen during times of plant stress, concurrent reductions in turgor and water content interfere with an herbivore's ability to access or utilize nitrogen. To explain the discrepancy between the observed outbreaks of phytophagous insects on water-stressed plants in nature and the negative effects detected in many experimental studies where plants are continuously stressed, we propose a \"pulsed stress hypothesis\" whereby bouts of stress and the recovery of turgor allow sap-feeders to benefit from stress-induced increases in plant nitrogen. Our finding that phloemfeeding insects respond positively on intermittently stressed plants but exhibit poor performance on continuously stressed ones is consistent with this hypothesis and suggests that the phenology of water stress as it mediates nitrogen availability may hold the key to understanding how water stress affects the population dynamics of insect herbivores.