Arabidopsis seed germination under abiotic stress as a concert of action of phytohormones.

Different abiotic stresses inhibit or delay the development and growth of plants. The most crucial step of plant life cycle, which ensures the survival of the next generation, is seed germination. Plants are sessile organisms that need to integrate internal and external signals in order to produce the correct response. Plants have evolved mechanisms that enable seed germination to be arrested under stress conditions and then resumed when conditions are favorable. The complexity of this mechanism was explored in Arabidopsis thaliana using mutants that had defects in their phytohormone metabolism and signaling pathways. These analyses led to the identification of many important components that are involved in these pathways and shed light on the complex crosstalk between phytohormones under abiotic stress. Combined "omics" techniques such as functional genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics with the support of bioinformatics, physiology, and molecular genetics have greatly expanded the present understanding of the seed germination process. This minireview focuses on the current status of knowledge about seed germination under abiotic stress with a particular emphasis on genetic interactions, hormonal balance, and epigenetic regulation that occur in Arabidopsis thaliana during this process.