Agricultural land is continuously declining due to soil salinity, pollution, desertification, erosion, and urbanization. According to the United Nations, the world’s population will rise to about 10 billion by 2050, therefore, it is necessary to improve crop yield to meet the global demand for agricultural products. Progressive farmers have been successful in increasing their yields yet procedures that have been adopted to increase yield have reached their limits. Applying economical and eco-friendly techniques to enhance crop productivity without disrupting the ecosystem has become mandatory. However, it is difficult to improve crop productivity without employing effective strategies for the regulation of physiological and metabolic activities in plants subjected to abiotic stress. Abiotic stresses, including drought, heat, salinity, cold, metal toxicity, organic pollutants stress, and oxidative stress, during all phases of plant growth, have harmful effects on physiochemical activities, growth, biomass, yield, and quality of produce. Plants have evolved various biological means to alleviate abiotic stress by synthesizing a variety of secondary metabolites. Polyamines are secondary metabolites that regulate physiological and metabolic progressions in plants to tolerate stress.

Rapid industrial development has increased heavy metal pollution in agricultural areas. Anthropogenic activities such as industrialization, urbanization, exploration, and mining have caused worldwide environmental pollution. This pollution has caused climatic extremes. Both environmental pollution and climatic extremes have negative effects on plant growth and production. Many studies have already reported some fundamental mechanisms of abiotic stress tolerance in plants. However, the effect of specific polyamines on modulations of cellular, molecular, and genetic mechanisms related to abiotic stress tolerance in plants is still unclear. It is, therefore, necessary to elucidate the crosstalk between polyamines, phytohormones, and stress-responsive genes as well as enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants for the alleviation of abiotic stress in plants.

This Special Issue invites original research and review articles exploring interdisciplinary methodologies involving the role of polyamines in improving plant growth, development, and yield through mitigating abiotic stress. We welcome submissions focusing on polyamine-related signalling and molecular modifications in plant stress tolerance. We also invite research focusing on the interaction between abiotic stress response and plant growth as well as crosstalk involving signaling pathways of polyamines and plant hormones.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Integration of polyamine signaling with other signaling pathways in stressed crop plants
• Modulations of polyamines on crops produced under drought and heat stress
• Exogenous application of polyamines to regulate morphological, physiological and biochemical changes in light stressed plants
• Polyamines to mitigate chilling and drought stress in plants
• Crosstalk between polyamines and phytohormones in inducing plant tolerance
• Mitigation of temperature stress in crops by regulating antioxidant system through the application of polyamines
• Effects of polyamines on soil fertility and crop productivity in deserts
• Seed priming with polyamines to mitigate metal toxicity in crops
• Polyamines to maintain signal transduction networks in metal stressed plants
• Effect of hydrocarbon stress on plant growth and the role of polyamines to induce stress tolerance
• Improving crop production in water-limited environments by exogenously applied polyamines
• Polyamines that alter crop response and tolerance to metal toxicity
• Plants under stress: the contribution of polyamines