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The role of zinc to mitigate heavy metals toxicity in crops

Frontiers in Environmental Science, ISSN: 2296-665X, Vol: 10
2022
  • 27
    Citations
  • 0
    Usage
  • 40
    Captures
  • 0
    Mentions
  • 40
    Social Media
Metric Options:   Counts1 Year3 Year

Metrics Details

  • Citations
    27
  • Captures
    40
  • Social Media
    40
    • Shares, Likes & Comments
      40
      • Facebook
        40

Review Description

Heavy metal (HM) contamination is a serious concern across the globe, and in recent times, HMs’ intensity has significantly increased, posing a serious threat to crop growth and productivity. Heavy metals pose serious health issues in humans by entering the human food chains. Therefore, it is direly needed to reduce the effects of HMs on plants and humans by adapting appropriate practices. In this context, application of micronutrients can be an essential practice to mitigate the toxic effects of HMs. Zinc (Zn) is a crucial nutrient needed for plant growth, and Zn application reduced the HM-induced toxicity in plants. This review highlights Zn’s role in mitigating the HMs toxicity in plants. We have systematically described the potential mechanisms mediated by Zn to mitigate HMs in plants. Zinc application reduced the HMs uptake and translocation plants, which is considered an essential mechanism of HM stress tolerance. Zn application also improves membrane stability, plant water relationship, nutrient uptake, photosynthetic performance, osmolytes accumulation, anti-oxidant activities, and gene expression. In addition to this, the Zn application substantially improves photosynthesis by enhancing the synthesis of photosynthetic pigments, photosystem activities, enzymatic activities, and maintaining photosynthetic apparatus structure, ensuring better growth under HM stress. Therefore, Zn nutrition could improve the plant performance under HM stress by modulating the plant’s physiological and biochemical functioning, anti-oxidant activities, osmolytes accumulation, and gene expression.

Bibliographic Details

Muhammad Umair Hassan; Muhammad Nawaz; Adnan Noor Shah; Athar Mahmood; Anis Ali Shah; Faran Muhammad; Maria Batool; Adnan Rasheed; Mariusz Jaremko; Nader R. Abdelsalam; Mohamed E. Hasan; Sameer H. Qari

Frontiers Media SA

Environmental Science

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