Cadmium contamination in food crops: Risk assessment and control in smart age

With mankind entering the smart age, Cd contamination risk control in food crop revolution has been put on the agenda. Based on the theoretical basis, technical methods and developing trends, this review look back and forward the age of Cd contamination risk control driven by ‘genotype (G)+ envirotype (E)’ dual-engines. Focusing on G, an inter-specific Cd contamination risk assessment meta-analysis was carried, in which a higher Cd contamination risk in rice and wheat than maize was observed. So different strategies are recommended to be taken considering inter-specific difference. To control the risk in crops with high accumulating characteristic, smart creation of low-Cd crops can be applied by two methods: 1) Excavating and pyramiding natural variations in natural population and 2) designing and implementing artificial variations which do not exist in natural population. Focusing on E, the influence of environmental factors to food crop Cd accumulation was discussed and the strategy using Envirotype-to-phenotype (E2P) models to predict and implement safety threshold were offered. In the foreseeable future, with the support of environmental science, biology, big data, artificial intelligence and other interdisciplinary and multi-technology, Cd contamination risk control will move toward intelligent, efficient and directional, ultimately realizing the revolutionary transformation from ‘experience’ to ‘smart’.