Heavy Metal Stress in Plants: Causes, Impact and Effective Management

Heavy metal toxicity is a persistent and significant havoc to plant system. It has been a subject of serious environmental and biological concern pertaining to be an arena of intense research. Plants are sessile organisms and presence of heavy metal even in the rudimentary concentrations can possess detrimental impacts to the physiological functioning of the plant system. There is a plethora of anthropogenic reasons for the release and accumulation of heavy metals in or near the plant system. Commercial enterprises, industrialization and Urbanization have led to the wide distribution of heavy metals such as Mn, Cu, Ni, Fe, Co, Cd, Zn, Hg and As etc. The geological and biological redistribution of these metal ions causes and interference with plant functioning and manifests in different ways. The current piece of work will provide a bigger conglomerate for heavy metal toxicity and plant stress. It will discuss the causes of aggregation, underlying mechanisms of impact and strategies incorporated for management of heavy metal toxicity. The heavy metal toxicity impacts the plant stress via dysregulating photosynthesis, cell wall functioning, altering the synthesis of plant secondary metabolites, sexual reproduction, ageing, mineral uptake, and enzymatic impairments. These physiological deteriorations have catastrophic implication on agricultural process as the accumulation in plant tissues makes the yield unfit for consumption and shrinks the overall yield. The recent physiological management intricacies are approached via nutrition, soil test and gauging, remediation, supplementing with organic material adjoined with the techniques such as Crop rotation and intercropping, addition of chelating agents, and selecting tolerant plant species. There is also a dire need to educate masses about the hazards of heavy metal toxicity, thus public awareness is also a suitable strategy as preventive measure.