Present study was conducted to appraise the inhibitory effects of cadmium applied at different time intervals on various growth and biochemical parameters in two maize lines, Maize-TargetedMutagenesis 1 and 2 (MTM-1 and MTM-2). Twenty-day-old seedlings were exposed to 0, 3, 6, 9, and 12？mg CdCl2 kg？1 sand. Both maize lines exhibited significant perturbations in important biochemical attributes being employed for screening the crops for cadmium tolerance. The results showed that a higher concentration of cadmium (12？mg CdCl2 kg？1) considerably reduced the plant growth in line MTM-1 on the 5th, 10th, and 15th day after the treatment. In contrast, irrespective of exposure time, the plant biomass and leaf area did not show inhibitory effects of cadmium, specifically at 3？mg CdCl2 kg？1 in line MTM-2. In addition, MTM-2 was found to be more tolerant than line MTM-1 in terms of lower levels of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2), malondialdehyde (MDA) contents, and relative membrane permeability (RMP). Moreover, H2O2, MDA, RMP, and anthocyanin increased at all levels of cadmium in both lines, but a significant decline was observed in photosynthetic pigments, total free amino acids, and proline contents in all treatments particularly on the 10th and 15th day after treatment. 1. Introduction Heavy metal stress is one of the major abiotic stresses that cause environmental pollution in recent decades. Cadmium is a toxic pollutant that negatively affects the plant growth. Cadmium is added to the environment by different sources and is persistent for a long time in the environment; it comes into the food chain through plants and threatened the ecosystems [1]. Cadmium is taken up by the plant roots and loaded into the leaves through the phloem and can be accumulated in all parts of the plants [2]. Thus, instead of just reducing the crop productivity and quality [3], it causes a severe health risk to mammals and humans [4]. The cadmium affects the whole life cycle of plants. It inhibits the seed germination [5], disturbs the photosynthetic metabolism and transpiration rate, reduces enzymatic and non enzymatic activities [6], disturbs water homeostasis and ionic relations [7], mineral nutrition [8], induces synthesis of reactive oxygen species, and strongly reduced the biomass production [8]. The cadmium stress causes chlorosis and leaf and root necrosis resulting in stunted growth in the majority of the plants [8]. However, the amount of cadmium deposited into the root, shoot, and interveins of leaves considerably differed among different species [9]. Cadmium induced oxidative
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