Functions and toxicity of cadmium in plants: recent advances and future prospects

* Correspondence: [email protected] 1. Brief historical notes and discovery of cadmium Friedrich Stromeyer and Karl Hermann discovered cadmium (Cd) almost simultaneously in 1817 in samples of zinc oxide obtained by roasting zinc carbonate from Salzgitter (Germany). Cd has no amphoteric properties and, although cadmiate anions are found, it does not dissolve in bases (Borsari, 2011). Cd is a relatively rare element and is not found in a pure state in nature. In the air, Cd is rapidly oxidised into cadmium oxide. It easily reacts with carbon dioxide, water vapour, sulphur dioxide, sulphur trioxide, or hydrogen chloride and produces cadmium carbonate, hydroxide, sulphide, or chloride. Cd can undergo weak bonding to carbon and other more electronegative atoms.