Endophytes for climate-resilient agriculture: Mechanisms and systems-level insights.

Endophytes can enhance crop tolerance to drought, salinity, heat, and nutrient limitations, supporting climate-resilient agriculture through diverse biochemical and molecular mechanisms.

• Why it matters: Developing sustainable agricultural systems that withstand climate change is critical for food security, and endophytes offer a promising biological resource to improve crop resilience and reduce reliance on synthetic inputs.
• What they did: The review synthesizes current knowledge on endophyte diversity, host interactions, and mechanisms of growth promotion, disease suppression, and stress tolerance, emphasizing multi-omics and systems-level approaches.
• The result: Integrating these insights with microbiome engineering and precision agriculture could enable the development of robust, low-input, resource-efficient, and climate-resilient crop production systems.