Seed priming: An emerging technology to impart abiotic stress tolerance in rice

Plants are exposed to any number of potentially adverse environmental conditions such as water deficit, high salinity, extreme temperature, submergence, etc. These abiotic stresses adversely affect the plant growth and productivity. Seed priming is an easy, low cost and low risk method for improving growth and development of plants especially under adverse environmental conditions. Seed priming has been developed as an indispensable method to produce tolerant plants against various stresses in rice. The beneficial effects of seed priming include faster emergence, better stands, and lower incidence of re-sowing, more vigorous plants, better drought tolerance, earlier flowering, earlier harvest and higher grain yield. These beneficial effects of seed priming are due to several reasons such as activation of enzymes associated with endosperm utilization and seed germination, mobilization of storage proteins, changes in hormonal balance and synthesis of proteins that play an important role during seed germination. Seed priming emerges as a promising technology for combating abiotic stress in crops and alleviating the detrimental effects of abiotic stress without much affecting its fitness. Seed priming methods are widely used as an emerging technology to produce tolerant crop varieties against abiotic stresses.