Nickel, Iron and Their Diverse Role in Plants: A Review, Approaches and FutureProspective

Abstract

In plant sciences, the prodigious significance of micronutrient is unavoidable since plant relies primarily on micronutrient as it has profound influence on array of plant activities. Nickel and iron are considered as the most important essential heavy metals (HMs) for plant nutrition. However, the increased amount of HMs within the plant tissue adversely affected plant physiology, and displays direct and indirect toxic impacts. Such direct effects are the generation of oxidative stress, which further aggravates inhibition of cytoplasmic enzymes and damage to cell structures. Heavy metals (HMs) toxicity has an unavoidable threat to environment and public health due to their increasing contamination and accumulation in atmosphere that ultimately passes to the living beings by the route of food chain. Heavy metals are increasing rapidly in soil and water by weathering of rocks and anthropogenic activities and are now emerging as a major health hazard to humans and plants. Iron and nickel play a crucial role in biochemistry and are essential micronutrients for plants and humans alike, also controversial elements because of debate on its essentiality or non-essentiality in plants. Both elements are important micronutrients because many metallo-enzymes including urease, Ni -Fe hydrogenase, Ni-superoxide dismutase. High concentration of both elements may affects all cellular and metabolic processes and causes retardation of germination, competition with other essential metal ions, osmotic imbalance, alteration of many enzymatic activities, disruption of cell structure and wilting, reduced photosynthetic activity, oxidative stress. Plants also possess some natural and stress-induced strategies to cope up with Nickel excess and /or toxicity. While iron is complexed with chelators and distributed to sink tissues where it is used predominantly in the production of enzyme cofactors or components of electron transport chains. The processes of iron uptake, distribution and metabolism are overseen by tight regulatory mechanisms, at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level, to avoid iron concentrations building to toxic excess. This review focuses on researches done on the morpho-biochemical alterations induced by elevated both Ni -Fe elements concentration in plants and as well as the strategies adapted by plants to survive and neutralize the effects of these alterations.

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