Seed Priming and Preconditioning Strategies for Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Agricultural Crops

Abiotic stress remains one of the most significant threats to global food security, driving yield losses across major agricultural crops. Among the pre-sowing strategies available to improve crop resilience, seed priming and preconditioning have emerged as highly scalable, cost-effective, and broadly applicable interventions — distinct from in-season biostimulant or agronomic approaches in that they act directly on the seed before germination to reprogram downstream stress responses.

Priming agents span a wide spectrum, including water (hydropriming), salts (osmopriming and halopriming), mineral micronutrients, antioxidants, phytohormones, microorganisms, biological compounds, physical treatments (thermopriming, plasma priming, magnetic field exposure), and emerging nano-based compounds — all applied as pre-sowing seed treatments. Each class is capable of triggering durable physiological and molecular changes that persist through germination and early seedling establishment, improving tolerance to drought, heat, cold, salinity, and heavy metals. Despite decades of applied research, the molecular architecture of the primed seed state remains incompletely understood — particularly with respect to how priming signals are encoded, maintained, and translated into stress tolerance at the cellular and whole-plant level.

A central and underexplored dimension of seed priming is priming-induced stress memory: the capacity of a primed seed to retain a molecular imprint of the priming treatment and deploy a faster, stronger stress response upon subsequent challenge. Epigenetic mechanisms — including DNA methylation, histone modification, and small RNA networks — are increasingly implicated in establishing and transmitting this memory, yet the field lacks a coherent mechanistic framework, especially regarding transgenerational effects. Multi-omic approaches applied directly to the primed seed state offer a powerful path forward, enabling the integration of transcriptomic, proteomic, and metabolomic data to map the molecular landscape of priming-induced resilience.

This Research Topic has two primary objectives. First, to advance mechanistic and molecular understanding of how seed priming and preconditioning reshape abiotic stress responses at germination and early seedling establishment in agricultural crops. Second, to accelerate the translation of laboratory-developed priming protocols into field-validated agronomic tools, bridging the gap between fundamental discovery and applied crop improvement.

This collection welcomes experimental and review articles that investigate seed priming and preconditioning effects on abiotic stress response in agricultural crops, with a focus on pre-sowing seed-stage interventions. Manuscripts focused on biostimulant application to established plants or mature crop physiology are outside the scope of this collection.

• Multi-omic profiling of the primed seed state — transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and integrated multi-omic approaches applied at germination and early seedling establishment
• Priming-induced stress memory and epigenetic reprogramming — DNA methylation, histone modifications, small RNA networks, and transgenerational inheritance of stress tolerance
• Physical, chemical, biological, and nano-based priming agents and protocols — hydropriming, osmopriming, halopriming, thermopriming, plasma treatment, magnetic field priming, nanoparticle-based seed treatments, biopriming with microorganisms, and antioxidant or phytohormone-based seed treatments
• Molecular and biochemical mechanisms of the primed state — roles of reactive oxygen species, antioxidants, phytohormones, and signalling molecules in establishing and maintaining priming-induced tolerance at the seed and seedling stage
• Physiological and biochemical crosstalk between primed and unprimed seeds under abiotic stress — comparative analyses revealing mechanistic differences in stress response trajectories
• Field translation of seed priming protocols — validation of laboratory-developed priming treatments under realistic agronomic and field stress conditions
• Comprehensive mechanistic reviews of seed priming and preconditioning in the context of abiotic stress physiology

Descriptive studies reporting responses to priming treatments without contributing to mechanistic understanding of the primed state will not be considered for peer review.

Article types and fees

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• ... View all formats

Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.

Article types

This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:

• Brief Research Report
• Data Report
• Editorial
• FAIR² Data
• Hypothesis and Theory
• Methods
• Mini Review
• Opinion
• Original Research
• Perspective
• Policy and Practice Reviews
• Review
• Systematic Review
• Technology and Code

Keywords: seed priming, seed preconditioning, abiotic stress, stress memory, epigenetic reprogramming, multi-omics, nanopriming, germination

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.