Decoding plant–nanoparticle–metal interactions: an omics-based perspective on TiO₂ and hydroxyapatite nanoparticles for heavy metal stress tolerance
Abstract
Heavy metal stress poses a serious challenge to plant health, threatening both crop yields and food security, ultimately endangering population health globally. The potential ecotoxicological impacts of HMs on plants can disturb regular physiological, biochemical, and also molecular functions. Emerging nanotechnology solutions, particularly involving titanium dioxide and hydroxyapatite nanoparticles, offer innovative strategies to enhance plant resilience against these toxic metals. NPs application enhanced mineral transportation, efficiently strengthening metabolism and photosynthesis, and ameliorated HMs stress through the regulation of antioxidant enzyme activity. This review provides a fundamental insight into the NPs application on crops and understands that NPs enhance crop growth and yield grown under HMs contaminated soil in an environmentally friendly manner, thereby addressing significant challenges of food security. Future researches should focus on evaluating the interactive effect of these approaches on molecular pathways, using HMs stress-resilient different crop varieties and interaction with microbial communities in diverse agricultural systems.