Abstract
Farmland cadmium (Cd) contamination has adverse impacts on both wheat grain yield and people’s well-being through food consumption. Safe farming using low-Cd cultivars has been proposed as a promising approach to address the farmland Cd pollution problem. To date, several dozen low-Cd wheat cultivars have been screened worldwide based on a Cd inhibition test, representing candidates for wheat Cd minimization. Unfortunately, the breeding of low-Cd wheat cultivars with desired traits or enhanced Cd exclusion has not been extensively explored. Moreover, the wheat Cd inhibition test for variety screening and conventional breeding is expensive and time-consuming. As an alternative, low-Cd wheat cultivars that were developed with molecular genetics and breeding approaches can be promising, typically by the association of marker-assisted selection (MAS) with conventional breeding practices. In this review, we provide a synthetics view of the background and knowledge basis for the breeding of low-Cd wheat cultivars.
Highlights
Cadmium (Cd), being a non-essential element, is among the most toxic metals [1].Cd and Cd-bearing minerals have been widely used in modern industries and agriculture.Globally, metal industries produce 24,000 tons of Cd each year, with China being the top producer [1].worldwide, 17.5 Tg of Cd-bearing phosphate fertilizers are applied annually in recent years, about 50% of which are applied in China, the United States (US), and India [2]
Further functional analysis showed that the DNA binding domain (DBD) of TaHsfA4a was crucial for Cd tolerance
Future studies may focus on the exploration of Cd-associated Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL), paving the way for routine pyramiding [92], multiline [93], and mixture strategies to breed low-Cd wheat cultivars with the desired traits
Summary
Cadmium (Cd), being a non-essential element, is among the most toxic metals [1]. Cd and Cd-bearing minerals have been widely used in modern industries and agriculture. Metal industries produce 24,000 tons of Cd each year, with China being the top producer [1]. In the year 2016, China produced 128 million metric tons of wheat on its 24 million hectares of farmland. Wheat Cd contamination has inevitably been a hot topic in China as a result of farmland pollution. Safe farming of the polluted farmland, which aims to produce metal-safe crops without purposefully removing soil heavy metals, is thought to be one of the best strategies. Low-Cd wheat cultivars are supposed to be effective and essential in the polluted farmland of wheat–maize rotation areas, typically in the Yellow River and Huai River Valleys of China. The screening of low-Cd cultivars was started decades ago [12], though it was not proposed as a formal measure for heavy metal pollution control until. We focus on the exploration of possible schemes of low-Cd cultivars breeding, based on a synthetic view of the phenotypic and genotypic responses of wheat to Cd and the available breeding strategies
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