Phytohormone Strigolactone: Involvement in Guard Cell Signaling and Abiotic Stress Tolerance in Plants

Abstract

Phytohormones are crucial regulators to boost-up plant growth and development under stressful situations. Plants have adapted many phytohormone signaling pathways to get around the challenging environmental restrictions and lessen the detrimental effects on crop growth progressions and productivity. Strigolactones (SLs), a new class of phytohormones, have played a role in a number of plant developmental processes. Due to their crucial functions in the control of numerous physiological and molecular activities during the response of plants to abiotic stressors, SLs have recently attracted a lot of interest. The SL enhances abiotic stress tolerance via different mechanisms including, regulation of photosynthetic attributes, antioxidant enzyme activities, ionic homeostasis, gene expressions, and reducing oxidative damage. Stomatal regulation is an inevitable process under stress to regulate gas exchange and transpirational loss. Literature shows that SL are often used regulators that induce stomatal closure in plants. However, the details mechanisms of SL-mediated stomatal movement have not been clarified adequately. In addition, since the initial discovery, significant progress and fresh information about the biosynthesis, signaling, and transport of SLs have been revealed. However, in this review, we provide a fundamental overview of SL perception and biosynthesis along with a thorough explanation of how we now understand SLs and their crucial function in tolerating environmental restrictions. The involvement of SLs in guard cell signaling and future research gap are highlighted.