From Seeds to Plantlets: The Impact of Priming on Ornamental Plants as a Tool for Enhancing Stress Resilience

Ornamental plants constitute an important sector of the agricultural market, with global relevance. The impacts of climate change also affect flowering plants, increasing susceptibility to stress conditions. The most common effects are related to germination capacity and uniformity, which can indirectly compromise aesthetic value. Seed priming represents a promising environmentally friendly strategy to improve germination performance and stress tolerance in ornamental plants. This review gives an overview of the most recent advances in priming applied to ornamental species, highlighting the physiological, biochemical, and molecular impacts of the technique. Priming approaches can differ (e.g., hydro-, osmotic, hormonal, nano-based), with the common aim of enhancing germination efficiency, seed vigor, and promoting greater uniformity and quality of plantlets under stress conditions. Up to now, a bottleneck in the use of this promising tool has been represented by different responses related to species and protocol standardization. Molecular evaluation is required to monitor the long-term effectiveness of priming. The use of priming represents a sustainable and low-cost tool to enhance the adaptability of ornamental species in stress conditions, supporting the transition to new sustainable solutions for the future of ornamental plant production.