Plants and their Interaction to Environmental Pollution

Damage Detection, Adaptation, Tolerance, Physiological and Molecular Responses

Azamal Husen

• Publisher: Elsevier
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN:
  9780323999786
• eBook ISBN:
  9780323983099
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Environmental pollution as a consequence of diverse human activities has become a global concern. Urbanization, mining, industrial revolution, burning of fossil fuels/firewood and poor agricultural practices, in addition to improper dumping of waste products, are largely responsible for the undesirable change in the environment composition. Environmental pollution is mainly classified as air pollution, water pollution, land pollution, noise pollution, thermal pollution, light pollution, and plastic pollution. Nowadays, it has been realized that with the increasing environmental pollution, impurities may accumulate in plants, which are required for basic human uses such as for food, clothing, medicine, and so on. Environmental pollution has tremendous impacts on phenological events, structural patterns, physiological phenomena, biochemical status, and the cellular and molecular features of plants. Exposure to environmental pollution induces acute or chronic injury depending on the pollutant concentration, exposure duration, season and plant species. Moreover, the global rise of greenhouse gases such as carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, nitrous oxides, methane, chlorofluorocarbons and ozone in the atmosphere is among the major threats to the biodiversity. They have also shown visible impacts on life cycles and distribution of various plant species. Anthropogenic activities, including the fossil-fuel combustion in particular, are responsible for steady increases in the atmospheric greenhouse gases concentrations. This phenomenon accelerates the global heating. Studies have suggested that the changes in carbon dioxide concentrations, rainfall and temperature have greatly influenced the plant physiological and metabolic activities including the formation of biologically active ingredients. Taken together, plants interact with pollutants, and cause adverse ecological and economic outcomes. Therefore, plant response to pollutants requires more investigation in terms of damage detection, adaptation, tolerance, and the physiological and molecular responses. The complex interplay among other emerging pollutants, namely, radioisotopes, cell-phone radiation, nanoparticles, nanocomposites, heavy metals etc. and their impact on plant adaptation strategies, and possibility to recover, mitigation, phytoremediation, etc., also needs to be explored. Further, it is necessary to elucidate better the process of the pollutant's uptake by plant and accumulation in the food chain, and the plant resistance capability against the various kinds of environmental pollutants. In this context, the identification of tolerance mechanisms in plants against pollutants can help in developing eco-friendly technologies, which requires molecular approaches to increase plant tolerance to pollutants, such as plant transformation and genetic modifications. Pollutant-induced overproduction of reactive oxygen species that cause DNA damage and apoptosis-related alterations, has also been examined. They also trigger changes at the levels of transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome, which has been discussed in this book.

Table of contents

• Plants and their Interaction to Environmental Pollution
• Chapter 1 Plants and their unexpected response to environmental pollution: An overview
• Chapter 2 Effect of UV-B radiation on plants growth, active constituents, and productivity
• Chapter 3 Effect of elevated CO2 on plant growth, active constituents, and production
• Chapter 4 Effect of elevated O3 on plants growth, active constituents, and production
• Chapter 5 Plants response to SO2 or acid deposition
• Chapter 6 Fly ash toxicity, concerned issues and possible impacts on plant health and production
• Chapter 7 Effect of coal-smoke pollution on plants growth, metabolism and production
• Chapter 8 Effect of heavy metals on growth, physiological and biochemical responses of plants
• Chapter 9 Interaction of nanoparticles and nanocomposite with plant and environment
• Chapter 10 Toxic effects of essential metals on plants: From damage to adaptation responses
• Chapter 11 Phytoremediation strategies of plants: Challenges and opportunities
• Chapter 12 Pesticide toxicity and their impact on plant growth, active constituents and productivity
• Chapter 13 Plant responses to water pollution
• Chapter 14 Plant response to industrial waste
• Chapter 15 Radioisotopes and their impact on plants
• Chapter 16 Effects of cell phone radiation on plants growth, active constituents and production
• Chapter 17 Effects of major munitions compounds on plant health and function
• Chapter 18 Aquatic macrophytes and trace elements: Deleterious effects, biomarkers, adaptation mechanisms, and potential new wave of phytoremediation processes
• Chapter 19 Production and role of plants secondary metabolites under various environmental pollution
• Chapter 20 Plant proteomics and environmental pollution
• Chapter 21 Genetic modification and genome engineering of plants for adverse environmental pollution
• Index