Climate-Smart Agriculture: Botanical Innovations for Enhancing Crop Resilience under Changing Climate Conditions
Keywords:
climate-smart agriculture, botanical biostimulants, crop resilience, abiotic stress, PGPR, sustainable agronomyAbstract
Climate change poses the most formidable challenge to global food security in the twenty-first century, with rising temperatures, intensifying drought cycles, shifting precipitation patterns, and increasing soil salinity collectively threatening the productivity of major cereal, legume, and vegetable crops. This study systematically examines the role of botanical innovations—including plant-derived biostimulants, bio-inoculants, plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), mycorrhizal associations, allelopathic crop extracts, and biochar amendments—as nature-based strategies for enhancing crop resilience under multiple abiotic stress conditions. Through a comprehensive literature synthesis covering 203 peer-reviewed studies published between 2018 and 2024, supplemented by meta-analysis of yield data from 78 field trials conducted across 29 countries in arid, semi-arid, and humid tropical environments, we quantified the efficacy of 13 distinct botanical innovation categories. Key findings indicate that PGPR consortia (Bacillus + Pseudomonas combinations) produced the highest mean yield improvements (22–38%) under multi-stress conditions, followed by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi inoculation (18–34% under drought and heat) and seaweed-derived biostimulants (12–28% under combined drought and salinity). Mechanisms conferring resilience include osmotic adjustment, reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenging, ABA-mediated stomatal regulation, induced systemic resistance (ISR), and soil physicochemical amelioration. The study further evaluates socioeconomic accessibility, technology adoption barriers, and integration pathways into existing agricultural extension systems across low- and middle-income countries. Findings support the mainstreaming of botanical innovations within climate-smart agriculture (CSA) frameworks, particularly for smallholder farming systems where synthetic input costs are prohibitive and climate vulnerability is highest.
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