Rice responses and tolerance to metal/metalloid toxicity

Abstract

Plants are sessile organisms and face numerous biotic and abiotic stresses throughout their life cycle, of which metal/metalloid toxicity considerably lowers crop production. Rice is an important food crop feeding almost half of the world population. Sustainable rice production under heavy metal-contaminated soils has become a challenge for researchers posing an extra pressure on food sustainability and toxicological effects on plants and human beings. Accumulation of heavy metals such as cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), copper (Cu), nickel (Ni), and others decreases the seedling emergence, growth, and yield of rice by interfering with photosynthesis, disrupting the cellular organelles, and destabilizing the nutrient balance owing to increased redox reactions causing oxidative stress. Like other plants, there is a great variation of heavy metal tolerance in rice genotypes with differential uptake and translocation of these metals from soil to grains. Therefore, efforts are needed to overcome the metalloid toxicity in rice genotypes toward heavy metal stress tolerance. © 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.