Nano-iron oxide accelerates growth, yield, and quality of Glycine max seed in water deficits

Dipanjoli Baral Dola; Md Abdul Mannan; Umakanta Sarker; Md Abdullah Al Mamun; Tofazzal Islam; Sezai Ercisli; Muhammad Hamzah Saleem; Baber Ali; Oana Lelia Pop; Romina Alina Marc

doi:10.3389/fpls.2022.992535

Nano-iron oxide accelerates growth, yield, and quality of Glycine max seed in water deficits

Front Plant Sci. 2022 Sep 9:13:992535. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2022.992535. eCollection 2022.

Affiliations

¹ Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur, Bangladesh.
² Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur, Bangladesh.
³ Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Agricultural University, Gazipur, Bangladesh.
⁴ Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, Ataturk University, Erzurum, Turkey.
⁵ College of Plant Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan, China.
⁶ Department of Plant Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
⁷ Department of Food Science, University of Agricultural Science and Veterinary Medicine, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.
⁸ Food Engineering Department, Faculty of Food Science and Technology, University of Agricultural Science and Veterinary Medicine Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

Abstract

Drought is one of the most destructive abiotic stresses that impact the growth, physiology, yield, and nutritional quality of seeds of crop plants. In modern agriculture, the use of nanoparticles can be beneficial due to their large surface area and higher potentiality to enter into the plant leaf during foliar application. This study aims to evaluate the effects of foliar spray containing varying doses (0, 100, and 200 ppm) of the nano-iron (Fe₃O₄) on the growth, physiology, yield, and seed nutritional quality of soybean under drought (40% of field capacity, FC) and well-watered (80% of FC) conditions. Leaf water status, chlorophyll content of leaves, the height of the plant, fresh leaf weight, fresh stem weight, fresh petiole weight, total dry weight, seed yield, and protein and oil content in soybean seeds were found to be suppressed by the applied drought stress. Under both drought (40% of FC) and controlled well-watered (80% of FC) conditions, the foliar application of nano-iron substantially improved the growth, physiology, yield, and quality of soybean seeds. The nanoparticles at 200 ppm increased soybean seed yield by 40.12 and 32.60% in drought and well-watered conditions, respectively, compared to the untreated plants. Furthermore, nano-iron increased the oil content of soybean seeds by 10.14 and 7.87% under drought and well-watered conditions, respectively, compared to the untreated control. Our results indicate that the application of nano-iron improved drought tolerance, yield, and seed quality of soybean, so exogenous foliar sprays of 200 ppm Fe₃O₄ were more effective than the other treatments in enhancing drought tolerance and can be utilized to reduce losses caused by drought stress in soybean-growing areas.

Keywords: drought stress; foliar spray; nano Fe3O4 particles; seed oil content; seed protein content; seed yield.