Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety (Jan 2024)

Selenium – An environmentally friendly micronutrient in agroecosystem in the modern era: An overview of 50-year findings

  • Debojyoti Moulick,
  • Arkabanee Mukherjee,
  • Anupam Das,
  • Anirban Roy,
  • Arnab Majumdar,
  • Anannya Dhar,
  • Binaya Kumar Pattanaik,
  • Bhaben Chowardhara,
  • Dibakar Ghosh,
  • Munish Kumar Upadhyay,
  • Poonam Yadav,
  • Swati Hazra,
  • Sukamal Sarkar,
  • Subrata Mahanta,
  • S.C. Santra,
  • Shuvasish Choudhury,
  • Sagar Maitra,
  • Udit Nandan Mishra,
  • Karma L. Bhutia,
  • Milan Skalicky,
  • Oliver Obročník,
  • Viliam Bárek,
  • Marian Brestic,
  • Akbar Hossain

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 270
p. 115832

Abstract

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Agricultural productivity is constantly being forced to maintain yield stability to feed the enormously growing world population. However, shrinking arable and nutrient-deprived soil and abiotic and biotic stressor (s) in different magnitudes put additional challenges to achieving global food security. Though well-defined, the concept of macro, micronutrients, and beneficial elements is from a plant nutritional perspective. Among various micronutrients, selenium (Se) is essential in small amounts for the life cycle of organisms, including crops. Selenium has the potential to improve soil health, leading to the improvement of productivity and crop quality. However, Se possesses an immense encouraging phenomenon when supplied within the threshold limit, also having wide variations. The supplementation of Se has exhibited promising outcomes in lessening biotic and abiotic stress in various crops. Besides, bulk form, nano-Se, and biogenic-Se also revealed some merits and limitations. Literature suggests that the possibilities of biogenic-Se in stress alleviation and fortifying foods are encouraging. In this article, apart from adopting a combination of a conventional extensive review of the literature and bibliometric analysis, the authors have assessed the journey of Se in the “soil to spoon” perspective in a diverse agroecosystem to highlight the research gap area. There is no doubt that the time has come to seriously consider the tag of beneficial elements associated with Se, especially in the drastic global climate change era.

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