“…Abiotic stresses such as heat or temperature stress, submergence, drought, or nutritional deficiency create suboptimal environments ( Jeyasri et al., 2021 ) that impair germination, seedling establishment, vegetative growth, flower initiation, panicle growth, grain filling, and productivity ( Banerjee and Roychoudhury, 2020 ; Beena et al., 2021a ). In rice, these attributes severely compromise crop establishment, growth ( Beena et al., 2021b ; Anie et al., 2022 ; Stephen et al., 2022 ), grain quality, and productivity ( Pravallika et al., 2020 ; Pathak et al., 2021 ). Some abiotic pressures in rice-growing environments spur the development and infection of biotic causal agents, aggravating the losses in productivity ( Narsai and Whelan, 2013 ) and grain quality.…”