Silicon and Its Application Methods Improve Physiological Traits and Antioxidants in Triticum aestivum (L.) Under Cadmiu
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Silicon and Its Application Methods Improve Physiological Traits and Antioxidants in Triticum aestivum (L.) Under Cadmium Stress Shafeeq-ur-Rahman 1,2,3 & Qi Xuebin 1,3 & Xiao Yatao 1,2 & Muhammad Irfan Ahmad 4 & Muhammad Shehzad 5 & Muhammad Zain 1,2 Received: 14 October 2019 / Accepted: 13 February 2020 # Sociedad Chilena de la Ciencia del Suelo 2020
Abstract Plants are exposed to various abiotic stressors in agricultural systems, especially cadmium (Cd) stress, which hinders plant growth and development. The current study was conducted to assess the protective role of silicon (Si) application in two methods and to identify the optimum method of Si application for wheat plants grown hydroponically under the same levels of Cd stress. For this purpose, we used two different silicon (Si; 1 mmol L−1 Na2SiO3) application methods (i.e., root application and foliar spray) on growth, chlorophyll contents, cell membrane injury contents, enzymatic and non-enzymatic antioxidants, and membrane permeability contents of winter wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) against four levels of cadmium (Cd), normal, 50 μmol L−1, 100 μmol L−1, and 200 μmol L−1, in 2-repeated greenhouse experiments. Results showed that Cd stress markedly affects growth, chlorophyll contents, and physiological traits and boosted up anti-oxidative defense system activity, osmoprotectants, and Cd contents. However, Si application as foliar or root induced reversibility of Cd toxic effects by significantly increasing growth, chlorophyll contents, membrane stability index, and Si contents and significantly reducing membrane injury contents measured as electrolytic leakage (EL) contents, lipid peroxidation measured as malondialdehyde (MDA) contents, and osmotic pressure measured as hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) contents and increased in enzymatic and non-enzymatic anti-oxidative defense system’s activity. Being an effective beneficial element, Si with the preference of root application improved leaf area, plant biomass, membrane characteristic, photosynthetic rate, and anti-oxidative defense system of wheat plants by alleviating Cd toxicity. Keywords Osmoprotectants . Membrane stability index . Photosynthetic rate . Osmotic pressure
1 Introduction Cadmium (Cd) is a toxic heavy metal due to its high relative mobility, water solubility, and phytotoxicity (Ismael et al. 2019). Its concentration in highly polluted soils of China, France, and some other countries was reported over 100 mg kg−1 depending upon soil parent materials (Wang
et al. 2019). Every year, Cd contaminated more than 1.3 × 105 km2 agricultural land and 1.46 × 108 kg cultivated products in China (Wan et al. 2016). Cadmium is a non-essential element not required to plants for growth and development, but its bioaccumulation index is high and sometimes exceeded that from essential elements (Usman et al. 2019). Mainly, plants absorbed Cd through
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s42729-020-00197-y) contains supplementary material, whic
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