Selenium and Nano-Selenium in Environmental Stress Management and Crop Quality Improvement

Crop plants growing under field conditions are constantly exposed to various abiotic and biotic stress factors leading to decreased yield and quality of produce. In order to achieve sustainable development in agriculture and to increase agricultural production for feeding an increasing global population, it is necessary to use ecologically compatible and environmentally friendly strategies to decrease the adverse effects of stresses on the plant. Selenium is one of the critical elements from the biological contexts because it is essential for human health; however, it becomes toxic at high concentrations. It has been widely reported that selenium can promote plant growth and alleviate various stresses as well as increase the quantity and quality of the yield of many plant species. Nonetheless, at high concentrations, selenium causes phytotoxicity. In the last decade, nanotechnology has emerged as a prominent tool for enhancing agricultural productivity. The production and applications of nanoparticles (NPs) have greatly increased in many industries, such as energy production, healthcare, agriculture, and environmental protection. The application of NPs has attracted interest for their potential to alleviate abiotic and biotic stresses in a more rapid, cost-effective, and more sustainable way than conventional treatment technologies. Recently, research related to selenium-NPs-mediated abiotic stresses and nutritional improvements in plants has received considerable interest by the scientific community. While significant progress was made in selenium biochemistry in relation to stress tolerance, an in-depth understanding of the molecular mechanisms associated with the selenium- and nano-selenium-mediated stress tolerance and bio-fortification in plants is still lacking. Gaining a better knowledge of the regulatory and molecular mechanisms that control selenium uptake, assimilation, and tolerance in plants is therefore vital and necessary to develop modern crop varieties that are more resilient to environmental stress. 

Mohammad Anwar Hossain is serving as a Professor in the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Bangladesh Agricultural University (BAU), Mymensingh-2202, Bangladesh. He received his BSc in Agriculture and MS in Genetics and Plant Breeding from BAU, Bangladesh. He also received an M.S. in Agriculture from Kagawa University, Japan in 2008 and a PhD in Abiotic Stress Physiology and Molecular Biology from Ehime University, Japan in 2011 through Monbukagakusho scholarship. As a JSPS postdoctoral researcher he has worked on isolating low phosphorus stress tolerant genes from rice at the University of Tokyo, Japan during the period of 2015-2017. His current research program focuses on understanding physiological, biochemical and molecular mechanisms underlying abiotic stresses in plants and the generation of stress tolerant and nutrient efficient plants through breeding and biotechnology. He has over 75 peer-reviewed publications and has edited 14 books, including this one, published by CRC press, Springer, Elsevier, Wiley and CABI.
Golam Jalal Ahammed is an Associate Professor at the Department of Horticulture, Henan University of Science and Technology, Luoyang, China. He obtained his B.Sc. in Agriculture and M.S. in Horticulture from Bangladesh Agricultural University. Dr. Ahammed received a PhD in Olericulture with a major focus on Plant Stress Physiology and Hormonal Regulation in 2012 from Zhejiang University, China. Later, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Pesticide and Environmental Toxicology and the Institute of Crop Science of Zhejiang University. His major research interests include plant stress physiology, phytohormones, climate change effects on plants, and environmental pollution. Dr. Ahammed published over 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals. He is a Senior Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports and Associate Editor of AoB Plants, BMC Plant Biology and Journal of Plant Growth Regulation. Dr. Ahammed was awarded four research grants for International Young Scientists by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. He was also a recipient of several grants from the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation.
Zsuzsanna Kolbert is an associate professor at the Department of Plant Biology, University of Szeged, Hungary. She received her PhD in plant biology in 2009 and habilitated in 2017 in University of Szeged. She visited Germany and Italy as a postdoc researcher. She examines plant responses (with special attention to growth processes) to excess elements (including selenium) focusing on the role of reactive nitrogen species and nitrosative stress. Currently she is working on nitrosative processes in nanomaterial-exposed plants. She has been a project leader of several national research projects. She has over 130 peer-reviewed publications and 5 book chapters. She is an editor of Journal of Plant Physiology and Plant Cell Reports and an associate editor for Journal of Experimental Botany.
Hassan El-Ramady is a Professor of plant nutrition and soil fertility, working at the Soil and Water Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Kafrelsheikh University, Egypt. He recived his PhD from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany (2008). He started his postdoctoral scholarships with ParOwn funded by Egypt to Hungary in 2012, then 2013 and 2014 funded by HSB, Hungary to Debrecen University, again from 2018-2019 at Debrecen University. He visited also the USA (2012 and 2014), Austria (2013), Italy (2014), Brazil (2015), and Germany (2014, 2015, 2016, 2017). His current research program focuses on the biological plant nutrition & its problems including new approaches like nanoparticles under stress. He has over 100 peer-reviewed publications, 30 book chapters and has edited 5 Arabic books, and he was lead-editor for the book “The Soils of Egypt”. He is Editor-in-Chief and associate editor for some journals like Frontiers in Soil Science, Egyptian Journal of Soil Science and Environment, Biodiversity and Soil Security. He is a reviewer for more than 150 journals.
Tofazzal Islam is a Professor of the Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering (IBGE) of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Bangladesh. He did PhD in applied biosciences at Hokkaido University, Japan. Dr. Tofazzal conducted postdoctoral research at Hokkaido University, University of Goettingen, University of Nottingham and West Virginia University under the fellowship programs of JSPS, Alexander von Humboldt, Commonwealth and Fulbright, respectively. He published more than 250 research articles and chapters in the international journals and book series. He is the Editor-in-Chief of two book series, Bacilli and Agrobiotechnology, and CRISPR-Cas Methods that publish by Springer Nature. Heserves as an Academic Editor of PLOS ONE and Associate Editor of Frontiers in Microbiology. An elected Fellow of Bangladesh Academy of Sciences (BAS), Professor Tofazzal received many awards, prizes and medals including a Gold Medal of BAS, University Grants Commission Awards, Commonwealth Innovation Award, Transformer Road Show Innovation Award of Islamic Development Bank and among others. Professor Tofazzal supervised a good number of Postdoc, PhD and MS fellows. His current research foci include genomics, genome editing, plant probiotics and nanobiotechnology. 
Michela Schiavon is an associate Professor in Agriculture Chemistry (2017- to date) at the University of Turin (Italy). She obtained her MD in Biology in 2002, and a PhD in Crop Productivity in 2006 at the University of Padova (Italy). She was Research Scientist at the Colorado State University (USA) from 2015-2017, and is still a Faculty associate member of the same university. Her expertise is in plant nutrition and physiology, crop biofortification, phytoremediation and plant-rhizosphere interactions. Her research activity was initially focused on studying the physiological and molecular mechanisms of heavy metal tolerance and acquisition by crops, and in metal-nutrient interactions during uptake processes. Then, she developed a major interest on the beneficial element selenium and biostimulants, with focus on their mode of action in crops to enhance NUE and resistance to abiotic stress. The main projects in which she has taken responsibilities or has been involved as an investigator are the following: US National Science Foundation grant IOS-1456361, US National Science Foundation grant MCB-9982432, PRID 2018 (Unipd), Young Researchers (Unipd). She is a member of the Scientific and Economic Committee of the TEAM-NET (Foundation for Polish Science) Grant Program No. 1/4.4/2018. She has 53 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and 14 book chapters. She is the topiceditor of International Journal of Molecular Sciences and Associate editor of Plants.