About this Research Topic

Background

Plants are a primary source of food, with just three (rice, maize, and wheat) providing nearly 60 percent of the world’s food energy intake. In recent decades, a major area of concern is increasing levels of emerging contaminants (EC) in agricultural crops. Due to human activities, technological sources, and natural resource extractions, agriculturally viable land and water supplies are being polluted, resulting in deteriorated soil quality and overall crop productivity. ECs are synthetic or naturally occurring compounds or materials, such as pharmaceutical products, pesticides, and mycotoxins, that have been identified as hazardous to living organisms. ECs are biologically active chemicals and their presence in the agricultural system could result in undesired noxious effects on the plant, soil, and ultimately human health.

Both biotic and abiotic factors have been proven to influence the ability of crop plants to uptake and accumulate ECs. Biotic factors include plants’ genotype, physiological state, and soil fauna, while abiotic factors include the chemical properties of ECs and environmental perturbations. According to existing relevant studies, the ability of crop plants to uptake and accumulate ECs decreases in the order of leafy vegetables, root vegetables, cereals and fodder crops, and fruit vegetables. However, further studies on crop species are necessary, as ECs have the potential to disturb plant physiological and molecular functions and significantly decrease crop productivity. The presence of ECs in soil-plant systems presents a challenge to agricultural science. To maintain agricultural output, it is important to investigate how ECs affect crop yields and the nutritional content of food. This Research Topic explores different types of ECs, how they interact with soil-plant systems and their effect on agricultural crop yield.

This Research Topic covers the following but is not limited to:

• Emerging contaminants and environment: exposure, bioavailability, and bio-accessibility
• Prevalence, persistence, detection, and characterization of ECs.
• Environmental risk assessments of ECs.
• Use of advanced treatment techniques for EC removal.
• Impact of ECs on soil functioning in relation to maintaining sustainable agricultural production
• Impact of ECs on crop productivity, and physiological and molecular functions.
• Accumulation and impact of ECs on plant health and metabolism.
• Toxicity, uptake, and transport of ECs in the soil-plant system.
• Exposure of ECs and generation of Reactive Oxygen Species in plants.
• Solutions to mitigate the adverse impacts of ECs using modern scientific approaches.
• Mitigation and remediation strategies using sustainable approaches.

Keywords: agricultural crops, emerging contaminants, abiotic stress, biotic stress, sustainability

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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