Background

Rice is the staple food for more than four billion people globally and it is cultivated worldwide across different climatic conditions. Among heavy metals, cadmium (Cd) is recognized as the most toxic heavy metal, and its concentration in arable lands has increased due to excessive use of agro-chemical and anthropogenic activities [1,2,3].

Rice generally has high bioaccumulation for various toxic metals such as arsenic (As), mercury (Hg), lead (Pb), and cadmium (Cd), respectively [4, 5]. Dietary intake of plant-derived foods that are rich in toxic metals especially As and Cd poses serious threats to consumers’ health [6]. Rice accounts for ~ 50% of the total Cd intake in people consuming rice as staple food [7]. Therefore, minimization of the transfer of Cd from the environment and/or rhizosphere to other plant parts specifically rice grains is important.

Although, Cd is a non-essential element, it is easily absorbed by plant roots, and competes with other bivalent ions such as Ca, Fe, Mn, and Zn to accumulate in plants [8,9,10], with subsequent phyto-toxic effects. The Cd toxicity in plants often leads to growth inhibition and disruption of physiological processes [11, 12]. Studies showed that Cd inhibits and reduces the germination rate, biomass accumulation, root-shoot ratio, and leaf development in rice [13, 14]. The inhibition in growth and biomass accumulation in rice are linked to the Cd-toxicity related mechanistic changes [15, 16]. Furthermore, Cd accumulation in rice plants can cause oxidative stress due to excess production of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and increased lipid peroxidation in plants [16, 17]. Plants produce enzymatic antioxidants such as superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), and catalase (CAT) to protect themselves against oxidative stress induced by heavy toxic metals [17,18,19]. Additionally, hydrolyzing enzymes such as acid phosphatases, proteases, and α-amylases are known to facilitate both seed germination, as well as seedling growth by activating nutrients in the endosperm, however, in presence of heavy metals, starch might be immobilized thus limiting the nutrient sources [20]. Cd toxicity severely inhibits the germination index, vigor index, radicle length, and amylase activities in rice [21], therefore, it is imperative to improve the early growth of rice under Cd toxic conditions.

Recently, nanotechnology has been extensively employed in the field of plant sciences to explore its potential impacts in improving crop yields under metal toxic conditions [22, 23]. Due to high reactivity, large specific surface area, and strong adsorption capacity, nanoparticles (NPs) can adversely affect the transport of co-existing pollutants such as pesticides, heavy metals, and toxic organics [

Availability of data and materials

The datasets used and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding authors on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge the funding provided by National Natural Science Foundation of China (31601244) and Guangzhou Agricultural Science and Technology Commissioner Project (GZKTP201815). We would like to thank TopEdit (www.topeditsci.com) for English language editing of this manuscript.

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  1. Yuzhan Li, Luxin Liang, and Wu Li contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory for Conservation and Utilization of Subtropical Agro-bioresources, College of Agriculture, South China Agricultural University, 510642, Guangzhou, China

    Yuzhan Li, Luxin Liang, Lin Ma, **angru Tang, Shenggang Pan, Hua Tian & Zhaowen Mo

  2. Crop Research Institute, Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Guangdong, 510640, Guangzhou, China

    Wu Li

  3. Department of Botany, Division of Science and Technology, University of Education, 54770, Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan

    Umair Ashraf

  4. Scientific Observing and Experimental Station of Crop Cultivation in South China, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, 510642, Guangzhou, China

    **angru Tang, Shenggang Pan, Hua Tian & Zhaowen Mo

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Contributions

YL: data curation, writing-original draft preparation. LL: writing-original draft preparation. WL: methodology, writing-reviewing and editing, supervision. UA, LM, SP, HT: writing-reviewing and editing. XT: writing-reviewing and editing, supervision. ZM: conceptualization, writing-reviewing and editing, funding acquisition, supervision.

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Correspondence to **angru Tang or Zhaowen Mo.

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Supplementary Information

Additional file 1: Figure S1.

The change of pH and Zn2+ in the ZnO NPs solutions and the Zn concentration in the seed after priming. pH in the ZnO NPs solutions (A), Zn2+ in the ZnO NPs solutions (B), and the Zn concentration in the seed after priming (C). ZnO NPs 0, ZnO NPs 25, ZnO NPs 50 and ZnO NPs 100: 0 mg L− 1, 25 mg L− 1, 50 mg L− 1 and 100 mg L− 1 of ZnO NPs. Cd 0 and Cd 100: 0 mg L− 1 and 100 mg L− 1. Values were represented as mean ± SD (n = 4). Different low case letters among the treatments within a variety shows the statistically significant at p < 0.05 according to least significant different test.Figure S2. The chlorophyll and carotenoids content in shoot. The chlorophyll a content in shoot. (A), the chlorophyll b content in shoot. (B), the total chlorophyll content in shoot (C), and the carotenoids content in shoot (D). ZnO NPs 0, ZnO NPs 25, ZnO NPs 50 and ZnO NPs 100: 0 mg L− 1, 25 mg L− 1, 50 mg L− 1 and 100 mg L− 1 of ZnO NPs. Cd 0 and Cd 100: 0 mg L− 1 and 100 mg L− 1. Values were represented as mean ± SD (n = 4). Different low case letters among the treatments within a variety shows the statistically significant at p < 0.05 according to least significant different test. Figure S3. TEM images of the rice roots and shoot in germinated seedlings. Red arrows nanoparticles.Figure S4. Analysis of the metabolic profiles in shoot of rice seedling. Principal component analysis (PCA) of metabolic profiles in shoot of rice seedling of **angyaxiangzhan and Yuxiangyouzhan under control and treatments (A). The Identified total significant different metabolites and up- and down-regulated metabolites (B). The Venn diagram of the significant different metabolites among the treatments (C). KEGG enrichment analyses of the identified significant different metabolites (D) and ranking of the identified significant differential metabolites (E) in **angyaxiangzhan and Yuxiangyouzhan under different treatments. X_A: ZnO NPs 0 + Cd 0 for **angyaxiangzhan, X_B: ZnO NPs 0 + Cd 100 for **angyaxiangzhan, X_C: ZnO NPs 50 + Cd 0 for **angyaxiangzhan, X_D: ZnO NPs 50 + Cd 100 for **angyaxiangzhan; Y_A: ZnO NPs 0 + Cd 0 for Yuxiangyouzhan, Y_B: ZnO NPs 0 + Cd 100 for Yuxiangyouzhan, Y_C: ZnO NPs 50 + Cd 0 for Yuxiangyouzhan, Y_D: ZnO NPs 50 + Cd 100 for Yuxiangyouzhan. The abscissa indicates that the rich factor, ordinate corresponding to each pathway is the path name, and the color of the point is p-value, the redder the enrichment is more significant. The size of the points represents the number of enriched differential metabolites.Figure S5. Metabolic pathways network.

Additional file 2: Table S1.

ANOVA analysis of the growth and physiological parameters.

Additional file 3:Table S2.

Metabolites detected in the rice varieties.

Additional file 4:Table S3.

The identified significant different metabolites in **angyaxiangzhan and Yuxiangyouzhan under different treatments.

Additional file 5:Table S4.

Fold change of the detected metabolites involved in the metabolic pathways.

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Li, Y., Liang, L., Li, W. et al. ZnO nanoparticle-based seed priming modulates early growth and enhances physio-biochemical and metabolic profiles of fragrant rice against cadmium toxicity. J Nanobiotechnol 19, 75 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12951-021-00820-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12951-021-00820-9

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