Mechanism of Cadmium Toxicity and Tolerance in Crop Plants
Heavy metal pollution of arable soils is one of the major limiting factors affecting the plant growth and productivity worldwide. In particular, contamination of agricultural soils with cadmium (Cd) is one of the most serious agricultural problems in the
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Mechanism of Cadmium Toxicity and Tolerance in Crop Plants Sarvajeet Singh Gill, Naser Aziz Anjum, Ritu Gill, Mirza Hasanuzzaman, Pankaj Sharma and Narendra Tuteja
1 Introduction Environmental pollution by heavy metals is a serious problem worldwide, which causes considerable loss to agricultural productivity. Over the last few decades, there is a dramatic, troublesome increase in heavy metal contamination of soil, water and air, globally. Heavy metals are ascribed to transition metals with atomic mass of over 20 and having a specific gravity of above 5 g cm−3 or more. Every year, India loses hundreds of millions of rupees from reductions in crop productivity (Mahajan and Tuteja 2005). According to Bray et al. (2000), the relative decreases in potential maximum yields associated with abiotic stress factors, vary between 5482 %. Although heavy metals occur naturally in soil as rare elements, burning of fossil fuels, mining and smelting of metalliferous ores, electroplating, gas exhaust, energy and fuel production, fertilizer and pesticide application, use of sludge or municipal compost, pesticides, fertilizers, and emissions from municipal waste incinerators and car exhausts all contribute to their spread in the environment (Alkorta et al. 2004; Wei and Zhou 2008). Major heavy metal pollutants include cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), copper (Cu), lead (Pb), Arsenic (As), mercury (Hg), nickel (Ni),
S. S. Gill () · R. Gill · P. Sharma Centre for Biotechnology, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak 124001, Haryana, India e-mail: [email protected] N. A. Anjum Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) & Department of Chemistry, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal M. Hasanuzzaman Department of Applied Biological Science, Kagawa University, Miki-cho, Kita-gun, Kagawa, Japan N. Tuteja Plant Molecular Biology Group, International Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi, India N. Tuteja, S. S. Gill (eds.), Crop Improvement Under Adverse Conditions, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-4633-0_17, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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silver (Ag), selenium (Se) and zinc (Zn) (Long et al. 2002). Contamination of arable soil with Cd is one of the most serious agricultural problems in the world, and therefore it is considered to be one of the most toxic elements to plants, animals and human beings. Due to its high solubility in water, it is promptly taken up by plants and this represents the main entry pathway into the food chain (Metwally et al. 2005; Farinati et al. 2010). The agricultural soil may have toxic levels of heavy metals due to various anthropogenic activities (Xie et al. 2006; Alkorta et al. 2004; Verma et al. 2007; Wei and Zhou 2008). It has been estimated that the heavy metal concentration in soil typically ranges from less than one to as high as 100,000 mg kg−1. Kamnev and Van der Lelie (2000) reported that ~9.9–45.0 tons of Cd is discharged into the soil every year globally, which is one of the most highly toxic enviro
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