Agricultural productivity is constantly being forced to maintain yield stability to feed the enormously growing world population. However, shrinking arable and nutrient-deprived soil and abiotic and biotic stressor (s) in different magnitudes put additional challenges to achieving global food security. Though well-defined, the concept of macro, micronutrients, and beneficial elements is from a plant nutritional perspective. Among various micronutrients, selenium (Se) is essential in small amounts for the life cycle of organisms, including crops. Selenium has the potential to improve soil health, leading to the improvement of productivity and crop quality. However, Se possesses an immense encouraging phenomenon when supplied within the threshold limit, also having wide variations. The supplementation of Se has exhibited promising outcomes in lessening biotic and abiotic stress in various crops. Besides, bulk form, nano-Se, and biogenic-Se also revealed some merits and limitations. Literature suggests that the possibilities of biogenic-Se in stress alleviation and fortifying foods are encouraging. In this article, apart from adopting a combination of a conventional extensive review of the literature and bibliometric analysis, the authors have assessed the journey of Se in the "soil to spoon" perspective in a diverse agroecosystem to highlight the research gap area. There is no doubt that the time has come to seriously consider the tag of beneficial elements associated with Se, especially in the drastic global climate change era.

Synthetic fertilizer and herbicides encompass the largest share in nutrient and weed management on food grain crops that create serious environmental issues. Integrated nutrient and non-chemical weed management approaches may help to reduce the chemical load in the environment, maintaining higher weed control efficiency and yield. A field experiment was conducted for two consecutive monsoon seasons during 2015 and 2016 in farm fields to develop a profitable and sustainable rice production system through integrated nutrient and weed management practices. A varied combination of nutrients either alone or integrated with chemical and non-chemical weed management were tested on transplanted rice in a factorial randomized block design with three replications. The results showed that the integration of concentrated organic manures with chemical fertilizer effectively inhibited weed growth and nutrient removal. Integration of nutrient and weed management practices significantly enhanced 9% biomass growth, 10% yield of the rice crop along with 3–7% higher nutrient uptake. Brassicaceous seed meal (BSM) and neem cake also had some influence on weed suppression and economic return. Thus, the integrated nutrient and weed management practices in rice cultivation might be an effective way to achieve economic sustainability and efficient rice cultivation in eastern India. Shortages of farmyard manure and vermicompost could be supplemented by BSM and neem cake in the integrated module.

Increasing productivity of maize while decreasing production costs and maintaining soil health are emerging challenges for the rice–maize system in South Asia. A range of integrated nutrient and weed management practices were tested in winter maize for their effects on yield, profitability, and soil health. The nutrient management treatments were a partial substitution of nitrogen with bulky (Farmyard manure; vermicompost) and concentrated organic manures (Brassicaceous seed meal, BSM; neem cake), whereas weed management practices compared chemical controls only versus an integrated approach. The N supplementation through BSM diminished the weed growth by reducing weed N uptake, and enhanced the maize crop uptake of nutrients. As compared to the sole chemical approach, atrazine-applied pre-emergence followed by hoeing reduced weed density by 58 and 67% in years 1 and 2, respectively. The N supplementation through BSM resulted in the maximum yield of maize grain (6.13 and 6.50 t ha⁻¹ in year 1 and year 2, respectively) and this treatment increased yield in year 2 compared to N application through synthetic fertilizer. Hoeing in conjugation with herbicide enhanced the maize grain yield by 9% over herbicide alone. The maximum net return and economic efficiency were achieved with the application of BSM for N supplementation, together with the integrated weed management practice.

We report the impact of drought stress on pearl millet during the early seedling stage and its survival mechanism. Drought stress imposed for a period of 7, 14 and 21 days showed considerable changes in morphophysiological attributes, which were evident by a decline in seedling elongation, fresh and dry biomass, and relative water content (RWC) and degradation of chlorophyll pigment. Besides this, visible chlorosis lesions were observed in leaves as compared to the control. As compared to the respective controls, a nearly 60% decline in chlorophyll content was recorded after 14 and 21 days of drought stress. In both root and shoot, drought stress raised the reactive oxygen species (ROS) levels. Both H₂O₂ and O₂^●− levels were significantly elevated along with a significant increase in lipid peroxidation in both roots and shoots, which clearly indicated ROS-induced oxidative stress. Concomitant with the increase in ROS levels and malondialdehyde (MDA) content in roots, membrane integrity was also lost, which clearly indicated ROS-induced peroxidation of membrane lipids. The activities of antioxidant enzymes and levels of non-enzymatic antioxidants were significant (p ≤ 0.001). After 7, 14 and 21 days of drought stress, activities of all the antioxidant enzymes viz., catalase (CAT), guaiacol peroxidase (GPX), superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione reductase (GR) were inhibited, clearly indicating a loss of antioxidant defense machinery. Likewise, the levels of ascorbate (AsA) and reduced glutathione (GSH) levels declined significantly (p ≤ 0.01). Our results reveal that, being tolerant to arid climatic conditions, pearl millet is highly susceptible to drought stress at the early seedling stage.