Bridging plant hormesis and agricultural sustainability: stress adaptation pathways, microbiome interactions, and technological innovations

Understanding plant responses to environmental changes is crucial for risk assessment and sustainable agriculture. Hormesis is a biphasic dose–response phenomenon in which low-dose stress promotes plant growth, while high-dose stress inhibits it, providing an important framework for revealing the plasticity of organisms in response to environmental signals. This paper summarizes the research progress on plant hormesis under abiotic stress and explores the potential application value of low-dose stimulation in agriculture. Although existing studies have quantified hormetic effects in different plant species and under various stress conditions, the underlying regulatory mechanisms remain insufficiently elucidated. Therefore, we summarize the molecular advances in understanding plant hormesis and point out that current studies have largely overlooked the role of microorganisms. Furthermore, we discuss the potential of real-time nanosensors for evaluating hormetic responses over temporal scales and propose integrating machine learning, ecological modeling, single-cell omics, and spatial transcriptomics to systematically decipher the molecular mechanisms of plant–microbe–environment interactions underlying hormesis. A deeper understanding of the molecular and microbial regulatory networks underlying plant hormesis will not only refine our theoretical framework of crop stress physiology but also provide new strategies and technological pathways for enhancing crop adaptation, resource efficiency, and yield stability under changing environmental conditions.