Advances in “Omics” Approaches for Improving Toxic Metals/Metalloids Tolerance in Plants

Abstract

Food safety has emerged as a high-urgency matter for sustainable agricultural production. Toxic metal contamination of soil and water significantly affects agricultural productivity, which is further aggravated by extreme anthropogenic activities and modern agricultural practices, leaving food safety and human health at risk. In addition to reducing crop production, increased metals/metalloids toxicity also disturbs plants’ demand and supply equilibrium. Counterbalancing toxic metals/metalloids toxicity demands a better understanding of the complex mechanisms at physiological, biochemical, molecular, cellular, and plant level that may result in increased crop productivity. Consequently, plants have established different internal defense mechanisms to cope with the adverse effects of toxic metals/metalloids. Nevertheless, these internal defense mechanisms are not adequate to overwhelm the metals/metalloids toxicity. Plants produce several secondary messengers to trigger cell signaling, activating the numerous transcriptional responses correlated with plant defense. Therefore, the recent advances in omics approaches such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, ionomics, miRNAomics, and phenomics have enabled the characterization of molecular regulators associated with toxic metal tolerance, which can be deployed for developing toxic metal tolerant plants. This review highlights various response strategies adopted by plants to tolerate toxic metals/metalloids toxicity, including physiological, biochemical, and molecular responses. A seven-(omics)-based design is summarized with scientific clues to reveal the stress-responsive genes, proteins, metabolites, miRNAs, trace elements, stress-inducible phenotypes, and metabolic pathways that could potentially help plants to cope up with metals/metalloids toxicity in the face of fluctuating environmental conditions. Finally, some bottlenecks and future directions have also been highlighted, which could enable sustainable agricultural production.

Multidimensional Role of Silicon to Activate Resilient Plant Growth and to Mitigate Abiotic Stress

“…The frequently found heavy metals, such as Al, Cd, arsenic (As), lead (Pb), mercury (Hg), copper (Cu), and zinc (Zn), in cultivated crop plants available through irrigation greatly influence the dynamics of soils ( Shimo et al, 2011 ; Nazli et al, 2020 ; Asaad Bashir et al, 2021 ; Mehmood et al, 2021 ; Haseeb et al, 2022 ; Raza et al, 2022 ). These heavy metals induce devastating impacts on crop production and are potentially toxic to human health.…”

“…The reduction in crop productivity by 51–82% on a global scale is primarily influenced by abiotic stress factors, such as drought, salinity, heat, cold, toxic heavy metals, hypoxia and anoxia, waterlogging, and nutrient imbalance ( Cooke and Leishman, 2016 ; Zahra et al, 2021 ; Raza et al, 2022 ). Contemporary climate change notably imparts drought and heat stress, two major abiotic stress factors resulting in crop loss and productivity ( Zandalinas et al, 2018 ).…”

Nanobionics in Crop Production: An Emerging Approach to Modulate Plant Functionalities

“…Even though the soil is nutrient-rich, crops are often unable to effectively utilize those nutrients, because modern agriculture completely relies upon the fertilizers that can avail the macro and micronutrients such as N, K, Mg, P, S, Ca, etc., and Cu, Mn, Fe, B, Cl, Mo, and Zn, etc., respectively [ 76 , 77 ]. However, these commercial and chemical fertilizers have limits, and they can only provide 30 to 50% of total crop yield nutrition [ 78 ].…”

Exogenous Application of Salicylic Acid and Hydrogen Peroxide Ameliorate Cadmium Stress in Milk Thistle by Enhancing Morpho-Physiological Attributes Grown at Two Different Altitudes

“…The environmental contamination to heavy metals and other pollutants hailing from the eighteenth century (Andrade et al, 2014) in which cadmium (Cd +2 ) is the most toxic heavy metal for the living biota (Raza et al, 2020). Heavy metals toxicity has been widely recognized (Raza et al, 2021a(Raza et al, , 2022Salehi et al, 2021;Zahra et al, 2021a). Cd +2 is a non-degradable trace metal contaminant, ranked seventh among the top recognized pollutants in the environment.…”

“…When Cd +2 enters the cells of plants, it interferes and disrupts the metabolic process because of an interaction with some organic compounds within organelles of cells and the cytosol (Ali et al, 2013;Mwamba et al, 2020;Raza et al, 2020). Furthermore, it may interact with proteins and lipids that result in affecting the enzyme and fluidity of the membrane by causing oxidative damage that initiates free radical formation (Yu et al, 2018;Mwamba et al, 2020;Raza et al, 2021bRaza et al, , 2022. It binds to sulfhydryl groups in proteins that also replace the important metal ions metalloproteins (Raza et al, 2021c).…”