Revolutionizing heat stress tolerance in Glycine max: Exploring the latest advances in microbial application

Abstract

Global warming has intensified the abiotic stresses on plants and threatens global food and energy security. Heat stress (HS) has become ubiquitous hazardous environmental stress, eliciting concerns regarding its adverse impacts on terrestrial and agroecosystems. Plant hormones function as signaling molecules essential for stress tolerance, defense mechanisms, and facilitation of plants' overall physiological growth and development. Numerous studies have reported on Glycine max that the exogenous application of phytohormones confers HS tolerance and activates endogenous defensive mechanisms by producing several secondary metabolites. This review summaries the recent progress in phytohormones and their corresponding microbes in the thermotolerance of Glycine max via integrating plant-microbial interaction. These studies suggest that beneficial microbes under HS can induce thermotolerance and thermomorphogenesis through several complex mechanisms. This is the first review to provide insight into the microbial-mediated phytohormone signaling pathway for the transcriptional modulation of secondary metabolism in a range of HS tolerances in soybean. Finally, we provide a primary perspective on improving the response of soybean plants to HS and on producing valuable phytohormones by exploiting microbial-mediated and secondary metabolite interaction.