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.

Lipid peroxidation is a physiological indicator of both biotic and abiotic stress responses, hence is often used as a biomarker to assess stress-induced cell damage or death. Here we demonstrate an easy, quick and cheap staining method to assess lipid peroxidation in plant tissues. In this methodology, Schiff’s reagent, is used to assay for membrane degradation. Histochemical detection of lipid peroxidation is performed in this protocol. In brief, Schiff’s reagent detects aldehydes that originate from lipid peroxides in stressful condition. Schiff’s reagent is prepared and applied to plants tissue. After the reaction, plant tissue samples are rinsed with a sulfite solution to retain the staining color. From this analysis, qualitative visualization of lipid peroxidation in plant tissue is observed in the form of magenta coloration. This reagent is useful for visualization of stress induced lipid peroxidation in plants. In this protocol, Indica rice root, Assam tea root and Indian mustard seedlings are used for demonstration. Bio-protocol is an online peer-reviewed protocol journal. Its mission is to make life science research more efficient and reproducible by curating and hosting high quality, free access protocols.