An explicit story of plant abiotic stress resilience: Overtone of selenium, plant hormones and other signaling molecules

Background Climate change has escalated global environmental risks, particularly the effects of abiotic stresses on agricultural productivity. Improving crop plants’ acclimation to abiotic stress environments is critical to cope with increasing incidences of abiotic stresses, which could potentially be attained by modifying adaptive physiological and molecular processes. Scope The agricultural sector is coherently linked with nutrient input, and thus the judicious application of mineral elements as “stress combaters” could be expected to show ameliorative responses under such circumstances. Selenium (Se) has gained substantial recognition as a ‘plant beneficial element’ governing stress adaptive responses by modulating metabolic and signaling pathways associated with plant growth and developmental processes. Se-mediated abiotic stress-responsive and mechanistic behavior have achieved significant progression, however, still there are numerous unexplored facets needed to explore, which will add-on the current elucidative knowledge on the underlying phenomena. Although the individual roles of Se, plant hormones, and other signaling molecules have been comprehensively delineated, their intricate interplay with each other to govern plant responses to multiple abiotic stresses is still unnoticeable. Conclusions The current review sheds light on the implicational approaches and underlying mechanisms of Se-induced plant developmental responses and tolerance to abiotic stresses, and its crosstalk with plant hormones and other signaling molecules in regulating the tolerance process. In the near future, it will be intriguing to explore further the diverse roles of Se with plant hormone signaling in the conflict between plants and environmental exposures. To understand this, the characterization and identification of key genes would be effective in exploring the intrinsic signaling mechanism of Se-PGR interaction to provide new insights into the complex signaling pathways to regulate stress resilience.