By the year 2050, the world’s population is predicted to have grown to around 9–10 billion people. The food demand in many countries continues to increase with population growth. Various abiotic stresses such as temperature, soil salinity and moisture all have an impact on plant growth and development at all levels of plant growth, including the overall plant, tissue cell, and even sub-cellular level. These abiotic stresses directly harm plants by causing protein denaturation and aggregation as well as increased fluidity of membrane lipids. In addition to direct effects, indirect damage also includes protein synthesis inhibition, protein breakdown, and membranous loss in chloroplasts and mitochondria. Abiotic stress during the reproductive stage results in flower drop, pollen sterility, pollen tube deformation, ovule abortion, and reduced yield. Plant nutrition is one of the most effective ways of reducing abiotic stress in agricultural crops. In this paper, we have discussed the effectiveness of different nutrients for alleviating abiotic stress. The roles of primary nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium), secondary nutrients (calcium, magnesium and sulphur), micronutrients (zinc, boron, iron and copper), and beneficial nutrients (cobalt, selenium and silicon) in alleviating abiotic stress in crop plants are discussed.

Drought and heat stress are two major abiotic stresses that challenge the sustainability of agriculture to a larger extend. The changing and unpredictable climate further aggravates the efforts made by researchers as well as farmers. The stresses during the terminal stage of cool-season food legumes may affect numerous physiological and biochemical reactions that may result in poor yield. The plants possess a good number of adaptative and avoiding mechanisms to sustain the adverse situation. The various agronomic and breeding approaches may help in stress-induced alteration. The physiological and biochemical response of crops to any adverse situation is very important to understand to develop mechanisms and approaches for tolerance in plants. Agronomic approaches like altering the planting time, seed priming, foliar application of various macro and micro nutrients, and the application of rhizobacteria may help in mitigating the adverse effect of heat and drought stress to some extent. Breeding approaches like trait-based selection, inheritance studies of marker-based selection, genetic approaches using the transcriptome and metabolome may further pave the way to select and develop crops with better heat and drought stress adaptation and mitigation.

Grain legumes are indispensable sources of plant-based protein, predominantly grown for their edible seeds. They are characterized with their exclusive property of symbiotic nitrogen fixation in root nodules in association with Rhizobium bacteria. Balanced supply of micronutrients has been manifested to be as important as macronutrients for extensive growth and development of grain legumes coupled with improved Rhizobial activities. Among those micronutrients, molybdenum (Mo) is of prime concern. It acts as a cofactor for nitrogenase and nitrate reductase enzymes, which are directly involved in biological fixation and subsequent assimilation of nitrogen in legumes. Thus, Mo plays a crucial role in nitrogen metabolism and protein synthesis. It also facilitates diverse physiological and biochemical processes including photosynthesis as well as carbohydrate and sulfur metabolisms. Optimization of Mo nutrition is invariably linked with accelerated phyto-availability of other essential nutrients to crops. Nevertheless, positive effects of Mo fertilizers tend to be more pronounced under acid soils where plant available forms of Mo are negligible. Research efforts have proven the dynamic significance of Mo in magnification of physiological growth, yield potential and nutritional qualities of miscellaneous grain legumes including chickpea, lentil, pea, grass pea, red gram, black gram, green gram, common bean, soybean, groundnut, cowpea, cluster bean, horse gram and hairy vetch. Studies have also shown that, application of Mo is cost-effective owing to its minimum dosage applied. Therefore, the recommendation for Mo nutrition is a definite step forward for profitable cultivation of grain legume crops while maintaining the fertility status of soil.

Heat and soil moisture stress account for serious abiotic constraint in black gram (Vigna mungo (L.) Hepper) production during spring–summer under Gangetic plains of Eastern India. Concurrence of these two can bring about early completion of phenophases that hampers normal metabolism of legumes by disrupting their defense mechanism, leading to poor seed set. The field experiment was conducted with two different sowing dates as the main plot, soil application of cobalt (Co) as subplots and foliar sprays of potassium (K) and boron (B) either alone or in combination as sub–sub plot treatment in a split–split plot design during spring–summer seasons of 2020 and 2021 with black gram (variety: Pant U 31). The study was aimed at evaluating the impact of sowing time and nutrients application alleviating adversities of abiotic stress during reproductive development of black gram. The March first week sown crop took significantly higher days to complete its life cycle compared to March third week sown one (82.0 vs. 78.2 and 81.8 vs. 78.8). This in turn relatively allowed a broader window for leaf area expansion, flowering, and seed filling in the first crop compared to the second one leading to the attainment of superior yield in the normal sown crop during the consecutive years. Crop growth rate (CGR), net assimilation rate (NAR), pod number per plant, seed yield, and harvest index were significantly higher (p ≤ 0.05) with soil Co @ 4 kg ha⁻¹ and foliar 1.25% K + 0.2% B applications through stress mitigation by stimulating chlorophyll biosynthesis, nitrate reductase activity, proline accumulation, and cell membrane stability, irrespective of the years. Fluctuations in per plant pod number explained about 96 and 94% variations in seed yield through linear regressions in respective years. Optimum sowing date along with soil Co application combined with foliar K+B sprays manifested immense potential to achieve higher black gram production. In addition, this nutrient schedule proved to be efficient enough to promote satisfactory growth and optimum seed yield of late sown blackgram through relief of stress during the spring–summer season.

The efficiency of a crop to intercept and utilize solar radiation for photosynthates production serves as one of the deciding factors of the productive potential of the crop stand. Interception and use efficiency of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) were estimated in relay grass pea under different nutrient management schedules in consecutive two crop seasons of 2017–2018 and 2018–2019. Treatments were two levels of seed priming (i.e., 1. S₁: Without seed priming and 2. S₂: Seed priming with ammonium molybdate at 0.5 g kg⁻¹ seed) and five levels of foliar-applied nutritions with various combinations of 2% Urea and 0.5% NPK (19:19:19) shuffling their times of application, replicated thrice laying out in a factorial randomized block design. Seed priming along with twice sprays of NPK (19:19:19) at pre-flowering followed by a second one after 15 days recorded maximum leaf area index (LAI) and total chlorophyll content augmenting greater interception and use efficiency of PAR with highest biomass accumulation, crop growth rate (CGR) and leaf nutrient contents leading to a significant increase in seed yield over control (1696.70 and 1182.00 kg ha⁻¹, respectively) in a pooled analysis. LAI and total chlorophyll content established linear relationships with PAR interception explaining about 94 and 88% variations in intercepted PAR at 90 DAS. Intercepted PAR during different phenophases was positively correlated to dry matter accumulation and net photosynthetic rate with polynomial relationships. Seed yield of grass pea varied about 95 and 96% respectively during 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 with the variations in PAR interception at the pod developmental stage.

The thermal environment of a crop is one of the prime factors enhancing growth and production by regulating its physiological processes at different phenophases. To study the impact of thermal regime on spring–summer-grown black gram (variety Pant Urd 31), an experiment was conducted with different sowing dates (from the first to the third week of March), soil application of cobalt (Co) and foliar sprays of potassium (K) and boron (B) in various combinations in the split–split plot design during 2020 and 2021. The first-week-of-March-sown crop recorded more accumulated growing degree-days (GDD), photothermal units (PTU) and heliothermal units (HTU) with a longer duration than the later sown crop. Higher daily mean temperature during the reproductive stage of the later sown crop compelled it to complete the phenophases earlier than the normally sown crop, leading to yield reduction. Soil application of Co at 4 kg ha⁻¹ and foliar sprays of K at 1.25% and B at 0.2% mitigated the adversities of excess heat irrespective of sowing dates. Variations in GDD and HTU, respectively, explained variations of about 75.8% and 87.3% in the final dry matter accumulation and of 72.9% and 84.8% in seed yield through polynomial regressions in the respective years. The maximum mean thermal use efficiency (TUE) for biomass production (0.24 g m⁻²/°C/day⁻¹) and seed yield (0.11 g m⁻²/°C/day⁻¹) were observed with Co soil application and combined foliar sprays of K and B due to higher dry matter production or seed yield with lower heat units accumulation in the first sown crop.