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.

Arsenic (As) contamination of the rice agro-ecosystem is a major concern for rice farmers of South East Asia as it imposes a serious threat to human and animal life; thus, there is an unrelenting need to explore the ways by which arsenic stress mitigation could be achieved. In the present investigation, we explore the effect of zinc (Zn²⁺) supplementation using the seed priming technique for the mitigation of As-induced stress responses in developing rice seedlings. In addition to the physiological and biochemical attributes, we also studied the interactive effect of Zn²⁺ in regulating As-induced changes by targeting antioxidant enzymes using a computational approach. Our findings suggest that Zn²⁺ and As can effectively modulate redox homeostasis by limiting ROS production and thereby confer protection against oxidative stress. The results also show that As had a significant impact on seedling growth, which was restored by Zn²⁺ and also minimized the As uptake. A remarkable outcome of the present investigation is that the varietal difference was significant in determining the efficacy of the Zn²⁺ priming. Further, based on the findings of computational studies, we observed differences in the surface overlap of the antioxidant target enzymes of rice, indicating that the Zn²⁺ might have foiled the interaction of As with the enzymes. This is undoubtedly a fascinating approach that interprets the mode of action of the antioxidative enzymes under the metal/metalloid-tempted stress condition in rice by pointing at designated targets. The results of the current investigation are rationally significant and may be the pioneering beginning of an exciting and useful method of integrating physiological and biochemical analysis together with a computational modelling approach for evaluating the stress modulating effects of Zn²⁺ seed priming on As-induced responses in developing rice seedlings.