ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Abiotic Stress
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1555618
This article is part of the Research TopicUnraveling Plant Responses to Cadmium Exposure: From Uptake to Stress ResilienceView all 3 articles
Mitigation mechanism of silicon and iron co-application to cadmium toxicity in tomato seedlings by integrated transcriptomic and physiological correlation analysis
Provisionally accepted
Zhongqun He1*
Xiaoting Zhou2
Wenjie Wang2Deyang Ye2Xiaoru Liu2Chutong Peng2Yunxin Tang2Lihong Su2Shaobo Cheng2
Kai Cao3Qiyuan Lei2Tonghua Pan4- 1Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, China
- 2Sichuan Agricultural University, Chengdu, China
- 3Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences (JAAS), Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
- 4School of Agricultural Equipment Engineering, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, China
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Cadmium (Cd) readily accumulates in plants during agricultural activities, leading to diminished crop yields and quality and posing a risk to humans. Silicon (Si) and iron (Fe) have shown promise in mitigating Cd toxicity, but the efficacy of their combined application to alleviate the stress of Cd remains unclear. This study focused on the physiological and transcriptomic responses of tomato seedlings to Cd stress. When tomato seedlings were subjected to Cd stress, the application of external Si and Fe effectively alleviated Cd toxicity, increased photosynthetic pigment content, antioxidant enzyme activity, transcription factor and improved plant growth. Transcriptome analyses revealed that photosynthetic antenna proteins, photosynthesis-related processes, and glutathione metabolism were significantly overrepresented among differentially expressed genes when plants were subjected to Si-Fe competition under Cd stress conditions.Fructose-bisphosphate aldolase is a critical component in the mechanism of the effectiveness of Si-Fe in mitigating Cd toxicity. The hub genes CAB13 and CAB6A could potentially play a role in the modulation of photorespiration and light-capture processes when subjected to Si-Fe treatment. These findings offer novel insights into the environmental impacts and underlying mechanisms governing the roles of Si and Fe in reducing Cd toxicity.
Keywords: Cadmium, Iron, Silicon, Tomato seedlings, Toxicity
Received: 05 Jan 2025; Accepted: 20 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 He, Zhou, Wang, Ye, Liu, Peng, Tang, Su, Cheng, Cao, Lei and Pan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Zhongqun He, Sichuan Agricultural University, Ya'an, China
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