Heavy Metal and Mineral Element-Induced Abiotic Stress in Rice Plant

The adverse effect of nonliving factors on living organisms is described as abiotic stress. It includes drought, excessive watering, extreme temperatures, salinity, and mineral toxicity. Rice is an important cereal crop, grown under diverse ecological and agricultural conditions. Heavy metal contamination of agricultural land causes abiotic stress to the crop plant as well as has a drastic effect on humans. Increased metal concentration in plants leads to the production of reactive oxygen species which results in cell death and thus affects the crop production in plants. In addition, increased heavy metal concentration in the plant has deleterious effects on its consumers. Like other organisms, plants have also designed ways to deal with such stress situations. In this chapter, abiotic stress due to metal toxicity in rice plant, which includes uptake and sequestration mechanisms, biochemical changes taking place in the plant and variation in their gene expression is elucidated. Based on several molecular and biochemical studies in various reviews and research papers, the role of different transporters like zinc-regulated transporter (ZIP), natural resistance-associated macrophage protein (NRAMP), copper transporter (COPT), yellow stripe like (YSL), heavy metal ATPase (HMA), metal tolerance protein (MTP) and other vascular transporters involved in the above processes in rice plant will be discussed in this chapter.