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Fruit crops are essential for human nutrition and health, yet high level of heavy metal levels in soils can degrade fruit quality. These metals accumulate in plant roots and tissues due to factors like excessive fertilizer and pesticide use, poor waste management, and unscientific agricultural practices. Such accumulation can adversely affect plant growth, physiology, and yield. Consuming fruits contaminated with toxic metals poses significant health risks, including nervous system disorders and cancer. Various strategies, such as organic manuring, biomaterials, and modified cultivation practices have been widely researched to reduce heavy metal accumulation. Recently, silicon (Si) application has emerged as a promising and cost-effective solution for addressing biological and environmental challenges in food crops. Si, which can be applied to the soil, through foliar application or a combination of both, helps reduce toxic metal concentrations in soil and plants. Despite its potential, there is currently no comprehensive review that details Si's role in mitigating heavy metal stress in fruit crops. This review aims to explore the potential of Si in reducing heavy metal-induced damage in fruit crops while enhancing growth by alleviating heavy metal toxicity.

Melatonin is an indolic compound derived from tryptophan and has an important role in the general processes of plants including germination, photosynthesis, circadian rhythms, flowering, senescence, and alleviating stress. Integrating melatonin application to agronomical practices reportedly provides numerous benefits. More particularly seed priming with melatonin has been shown to improve seed germination as well as improve resilience under adverse conditions. This review discusses in detail the studies showing elevated drought, salinity, heat, and heavy metal stress resistance as a result of melatonin seed priming. Differences in transcript and protein levels have been observed in plants/seedlings germinated via melatonin primed seeds, providing the foundation for further studies. Many pieces of research have also shown primed seeds possess a greater content of osmoprotectants, upregulation of energy-producing pathways, and an increase in protein content, which may lead to enhancing abiotic stress response in plants. The primary function attributed to melatonin is reactive oxygen species scavenging, which consequently leads to enhancing plant stress resistance against multiple stresses. Here, we highlight all the potential mechanisms involved in melatonin meditated induction of abiotic stress tolerance. We review the reports emphasizing the role played by melatonin under stress conditions in multiple crop species, the modification at genome, ribonucleic acid, and protein level involved, and the underlying mechanisms. Information provided here will be helpful to better understand the melatonin role in plants and its efficient exploration in the cropping system.