Seed Priming Technology as a Key Strategy to Increase Crop Plant Production under Adverse Environmental Conditions

Farmers and seed manufactures constantly require high-quality seeds with excellent agronomic performance. However, faced with environmental adversity, limited natural resources, and increasing food demand around the globe, attention has turned to improving crop plant production by implementing efficient strategies. Seed priming technology has shown promising biological improvements leading to suitable agronomic performance in crop plants under adverse environmental conditions. Seeds are subjected to controlled conditions that are conducive to complex physio-biochemical and molecular changes, conferring specific stress tolerance to subsequent germination and growth conditions. Despite several studies that have provided positive evidence of seed priming in crop plant production, there seems less adoption of such priming on a commercial scale. In this review paper, we aimed to study the recent approaches in the efficiency of hydropriming, osmopriming, hormopriming, nanopriming, physical priming, biopriming, and novel techniques of hybrid priming procedures in the production of crop plants under environmental adversity, as well as their physio-biochemical and molecular mechanism changes. All priming methods have induced relevant changes in physio-biochemical and molecular mechanisms related to crop plant production by mitigating salinity effects, heavy metals, and flooding stress and enhancing chilling, heat, drought, and phytopathogen tolerance. Future studies using seed priming techniques may investigate molecular changes, in accordance with proteomic and/or metabolomics approaches, to identify and track stress-response genes during and after priming procedures, as well as during plant development, especially on a commercial scale. Moreover, the study strongly recommends that research combines multiple priming methods, known as hybrid priming, in their investigations to provide novel technologies and additional biological approaches in order to enhance the knowledge of crop plant science. Moreover, the use of resistant crop plant varieties/cultivars combined with priming techniques has shown efficient agronomical improvements under environmental stress conditions. Collectively, these findings shed light on the use of seed priming technology on the commercial scale as a key strategy to increase crop plant production under environmental adversity by acquiring stress tolerance and enhancing agronomic traits to meet global food demands.