“…Along with the entire group of unfavorable aspects of Cd on the rhizosphere (Lux et al, 2011), several toxicity reports of Cd on the cell level (Benavides et al, 2005;Martinka et al, 2014), as well as negative influence of this heavy metal on photosynthetic-related processes in leaf mesophyll tissues are known (Hasan et al, 2009). In maize, Cd was shown to decrease the chlorophyll synthesis (Lagriffoul et al, 1998;Chaneva et al, 2010), effective photochemical quantum yield of photosystem II (Φ PSiI ), as well as rate of CO 2 fixation (Ekmekçi et al, 2008;Wang et al, 2009;Da Silva et al, 2012).…”