Theories and Methods for Minimizing Cadmium Pollution in Crops: Case Studies on Water Spinach

The cadmium (Cd) contamination has raised increasingly global concern on food safety. The book was composed to bring comprehensive and valuable thoughts about the food safety management against heavy metal contamination. In this book, current status of cadmium contamination in agricultural soils and crops is systematically summarized. In order to reduce the risk of Cd pollution in crops, Cd pollution-safe cultivar (Cd-PSC) strategy, i.e. identifying, breeding and applying the cultivars with particularly low Cd accumulation capacity in edible parts even when grown in Cd contaminated soil, is proposed as a most effective, low-cost and environmental-friendly method for minimizing Cd pollution in crops. To describe the framework of the Cd-PSC strategy, a series research results on water spinach (Ipomoea aquatica Forsk) are summarized as a typical case. The latest findings about the Cd-PSCs of water spinach, including cultivar variation in shoot Cd accumulation, identification and verification of low- and high-Cd accumulating cultivars, stability of Cd accumulation capacity at the cultivar level, biochemical and molecular mechanisms of the cultivar-dependent Cd uptake, transfer and accumulation, breeding methods for improving Cd-PSCs, and so on, have been covered.  This book will provide valuable theoretical and practical understandings for controlling Cd pollution in crops grown on agricultural soils with known or unknown risk of Cd contamination.

Dr. Zhongyi Yang is the professor of ecology and environmental science in School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, China. He received his Ph.D degree in  1988 from Tohoku University, Japan. As an experienced reviewer for over 20 peer-reviewed international journals, he has kept in pace with the frontiers of environmental and ecology science. His research interests mainly involve in methods of ecological agriculture, heavy metal accumulation pattern in crops, ecology toxicology, environmental education, and low carbon development.  He has proposed the concept of pollution-safe cultivars as the strategy to minimize heavy metal pollution in crops and investigated the Cd pollution-safe cultivars of leafy vegetables and the chemical and molecular mechanisms of cultivar-dependent Cd accumulation for nearly 20 years.  

Dr. Chuntao He is the associate professor of ecology in School of Agriculture, Sun Yat-sen University, China. She received her Ph.D degree in environmental science from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China in 2016. Her research interest broadly lies in the fields of applied ecology such as pollutant behavior in ecosystem, safe production of agriculture, and ways for green development. In recent years, she has focused on the breeding of Cd pollution-safe cultivar through the physiology, biochemical, molecular biology, and bioinformatic techniques.

Dr. Junliang Xin is professor of environmental science in School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Hunan Institute of Technology, Hengyang, China. He received his Ph.D degree in environmental science from Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China in 2010. He is a reviewer for more than 20 peer-reviewed international journals and a member of the Chinese Society for Environmental Sciences. His research interests include physiological, biochemical, and molecular biological mechanisms in crops under cadmium exposure; phytoremediation; constructed wetland for wastewater treatment; remediation of heavy metal contaminated soil. Recently, his work has focused on minimizing cadmium accumulation in rice and vegetables grown in cadmium contaminated soil. His group investigates the mechanisms of different amendments and fertilizers in reducing cadmium accumulation in crops, and the effectiveness of boron removal by plant-based wetlands and floating islands.