Guest Editors
Prof. Parvaiz Ahmad, Department of Botany, GDC, Jammu and Kashmir, India
Dr. Muhammad Ahsan Altaf, College of Horticulture, Hainan University, China
Dr. Vaseem Raja, University Centre for Research and Development, Chandigarh University, India
Summary
Since the dawn of evolution life on this planet has been influenced and strongly associated with numerous important factors, undoubtably the plants being the major factors among all that play a pivotal role in sustaining life on this mother earth. Soil is the biggest reservoir of almost all the essential and non-essential mineral essential elements for the plants, however, irrational mineralization has led to the production of large amount of metal mining waste. Additionally, changing human lifestyle, urbanization, mining of metals and their widespread use in the industries has brought plethora of problems such as contamination of soils with metals and metalloids that in turn build a mountainous pressure on this precious resource. Heavy metal pollution has been recognized as a global problem mainly in the areas with higher anthropogenic activities which ultimately leads to loss of agricultural land as well as the crop production. As heavy metals cannot be decomposed by soil microorganisms, they are easily accumulated, absorbed by the plant roots and transported into human body through food chain. Accumulation of toxic heavy metals species like cadmium, lead, arsenic, mercury and many more in different parts of the plants induce toxicity phytotoxicity.
Heavy metal and metalloid toxicity in plants disrupt plant growth and development leading to the loss in crop yield. Metal stress for longer duration generates secondary stress popularly known as oxidative stress, which is manifested by the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS). With the passage of evolution plants have developed an intricate physiological and molecular network to cope up this metal menace. Researchers across the globe are trying to identify plant species which act as hyper-accumulators and to devise and develop strategies to for the reclamation of these contaminated soils. In this direction, sustainable approaches to mitigate metal stress in plants has become the need of the hour, as growing population and changing environmental conditions and food security major problems that scientists have to deal with. Crop production from limited land resources can only be possible by the proper use of land resources and the use of mitigating agents such as the use of nutrients, external supplementation of beneficial elements, phytohormones and other plant promoting agents.
The main theme of this special issue is to gather research and review articles of high quality that will highlight the role how heavy metal toxicity will be mitigated without making any damage to the crop production.
The focus of the special issue will be on the following aspects:
• Role of phytohormones in heavy metal stress tolerance in plants.
• Phytohormone mediated improvement in crop production under metal stress.
• Cross talk between phytohormones and other signaling molecules under metal stress.
• Molecular mechanism of metal transport in plants.
• Metal toxicity and sequestration in plants.
• Sequestration of heavy metals by biochar amendment.
• Heavy metal sequestration by nano particles.
• Physiological and molecular mechanisms of metal accumulation in hyper-accumulator plants.
• Phytoremediation: from gene to ecosystems.
• Phytochelatins.
• Role of GSH-dependent compounds in heavy metal transport and accumulation.
• The impact of beneficial metalloids on the mitigation of heavy metal stress in plants.
• Role of mineral elements and beneficial microbes in plant metal tolerance
Keywords
heavy metal toxicity; plant growth development; oxidative stress; phytohormones; plant physiology
Login
Register
Submit a Paper
Propose a Special lssue