J Integr Plant Biol.

• Review Article • Previous Articles    

Unlocking plant abiotic stress resilience through biostimulants and omics-driven innovations

Muhammad Ateeq1†, Shariq Mahmood Alam1†, Muhammad Mohsin Kaleem1, Shah Fahad2, Muhammad Atiq Ashraf1, Muhammad Asim1, Kaijie Zhu1, Fareeha Shireen3, Junwei Liu1 and Hanzi He4*   

  1. 1. National Key Laboratory for Germplasm Innovation and Utilization of Horticultural Crops, College of Horticulture and Forestry Sciences, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
    2. Department of Agronomy, Abdul Wali Khan University, Mardan 23200, Pakistan
    3. Institute of Horticultural Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad 38000, Pakistan
    4. National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
    These authors contributed equally to this work.
    *Correspondence: Hanzi He (hzhe@mail.hzau.edu.cn)
  • Received:2025-05-12 Accepted:2026-02-08 Online:2026-03-04
  • Supported by:
    Funding for this research was obtained from various sources, including the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2023YFF1000704 and 2022YFD1200400), Biological Breeding‐National Science and Technology Major Project (2024ZD04077), the Technological Innovation Initiative of Hubei Province (2024BBA001), and the Technology Major Project on Key Techniques of Agricultural Biological Breeding (2023ZD0404203).

Abstract: Frequent changes in global climate enhance environmental cues, threaten agricultural systems, which jeopardizes food security, and impair the achievements of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 2 “Zero Hunger”. To achieve a sustainable path, use of biostimulants represents a new strategy to enhance plant resilience against abiotic stresses like drought, temperature, salt, waterlogging, and heavy metals. This review explores recent developments in biostimulant technologies, aiming to clarify the processes that underlie their ability to promote plant tolerance. We also highlight the versatile roles of small RNA, peptides, and hormones as emerging molecular regulators, thereby revealing their potential for use as natural biostimulants. Developing on this, transformative effects of microbial biostimulants that use microbiota to strongly regulate plant stress-responsive modules are explored. Furthermore, AI-driven early warning systems provide the opportunity to identify timely stress responses, thus enabling the discovery of multi-omics network modules, allowing rational biostimulant design. These findings are then used to guide the metabolic engineering of tailored biostimulants, where the identified key regulators and network modules become direct targets for formulation or synthetic biology approaches. This review defines a roadmap for crop stress tolerance by clarifying the mechanisms of rationally designed biostimulants, thereby paving the way for climate-resilient agriculture and sustainable food systems.

Key words: artificial intelligence, climate change, metabolic engineering, multi‐omics integration, natural and synthetic biostimulants, SMART crops

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