Accumulation of plastics in terrestrial crop plants and its impact on the plant growth

Small plastic particles are persistent in soil and will remain in the agricultural ecosystem for a long period, so there is an urgent need to uncover their potential impacts on the agricultural ecosystem. Plastics in the agricultural ecosystem are alarming as they can accumulate in crop plants and affect consumers by directly entering through the food web. Through disintegration of plastic, microplastics and nanoplastics (NPs) are generated and accumulated in significant quantities in soil. Incidentally, plastics have been shown to alter biophysical and geochemical properties of soil. The dispersion and transport of plastics in soil could directly impact crop plants and reduce crop yield. There are limited studies on uptake and accumulation of MPs and NPs in terrestrial plants but studies reported so far have shown phytoremediation as a potential remediation technique to extract and degrade plastic particles from agricultural soils. This review discusses the impacts of MPs and NPs on terrestrial plants growth and accumulation in different plant tissues based on recent literature.