Using Biostimulants Containing Phytohormones to Recover Hail-Damaged Essential Oil Plants

Hail can cause significant damage to aromatic and medicinal plants; however, this has never been investigated scientifically on most of aromatic and medicinal plants. Globally, essential oil crop producers primarily make use of agricultural crop insurance and costly mitigation strategies to recover lost production costs and alleviate hail-damaged plants. However, most aromatic and medicinal plants are not covered under agricultural crop insurance, and many commercial farmers are not able to regularly employ expensive alternative strategies. Therefore, hail damage may present a challenge to essential oil growers. The use of natural and synthetic phytohormones in a form of biostimulants, as an alternative biological mitigation strategy against hail damage in essential oil crops, has not received much attention, and there is no information on this topic. Exogenous applications of natural and synthetic biostimulants have consistently demonstrated growth enhancement, nutrient acquisition, yield and quality optimization, as well as physiological efficiency in plants. Biostimulants in a form of phytohormones are involved in diverse plant physiological processes, including the regulation of gene expression for adaptive responses to biotic and abiotic stresses. Using biostimulants, this chapter will detail the potential recovery response of aromatic and medicinal plants to hail damage, and the response of plants treated with biostimulants.