Heavy metals (HMs) are a serious threat all over the world and show a different impact on plants and human life by contaminating the plant. Among all HMs cadmium (Cd) is one of the serious metals that are absorbed by the roots of the plant and are transported from root to leaves and fruit. Cd stunted plant growth causes the death of plants, causes, and disturbance in photosynthetic machinery and nutrient homeostasis process. Based on a serious problem a controlled experiment was conducted in the

The foliar applied Silicon (Si) has potential to ameliorate heavy metals especially cadmimum (Cd) toxicity, however Si dose optimization is strategically important for boosting growth of soil microbes and Cd stress mitigation.. Thus, the current research was performed to assess the Si induced physiochemical and antioxidant traits alterations along with Mycorrhizal (VAM) status in maize roots under Cd stress.The trial included foliar Si application at the rate of 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 ppm while Cd stress was induced after full germination. The response variables included various physiochemical traits such as leaf pigments, protein and sugar contents etc. along with VAM alterations under induced Cd stress. The results revealed that foliage applied Si in higher dose remained effective in improving the leaf pigments,proline, soluble sugar, total proteins, and all free amino acids. Additionally, the same treatment remained unmatched in terms of antioxidant activity compared to lower doses of foliar applied Si.Moreover, VAM was recorded to be at peak under 20 ppm Si treatment. Thus, these encouraging ndings may serve as baseline to develop Si foliar application as biologically viable mitigation strategy for maize grown in Cd toxic soils, future studies must test more doses with respect to to varying Cd stress levels along with determining the most responsive crop stage for Si foliar application.

The foliar applied Silicon (Si) has potential to ameliorate heavy metals especially cadmimum (Cd) toxicity, however Si dose optimization is strategically important for boosting growth of soil microbes and Cd stress mitigation.. Thus, the current research was performed to assess the Si induced physiochemical and antioxidant traits alterations along with Mycorrhizal (VAM) status in maize roots under Cd stress.The trial included foliar Si application at the rate of 0, 5, 10, 15, and 20 ppm while Cd stress was induced after full germination. The response variables included various physiochemical traits such as leaf pigments, protein and sugar contents etc. along with VAM alterations under induced Cd stress. The results revealed that foliage applied Si in higher dose remained effective in improving the leaf pigments,proline, soluble sugar, total proteins, and all free amino acids. Additionally, the same treatment remained unmatched in terms of antioxidant activity compared to lower doses of foliar applied Si.Moreover, VAM was recorded to be at peak under 20 ppm Si treatment. Thus, these encouraging findings may serve as baseline to develop Si foliar application as biologically viable mitigation strategy for maize grown in Cd toxic soils, future studies must test more doses with respect to to varying Cd stress levels along with determining the most responsive crop stage for Si foliar application.

Heavy metals (HMs) are a serious threat all over the world and show a different impact on plants and human life by contaminating the plant. Among all HMs cadmium (Cd) is one of the serious metals that are absorbed by the roots of the plant and are transported from root to leaves and fruit. Cd stunted plant growth causes the death of plants, causes, and disturbance in photosynthetic machinery and nutrient homeostasis process. Based on a serious problem a controlled experiment was conducted in the Department of Botany, University of Central Punjab, Bahawalpur Campus, Bahawalpur, Pakistan on “inducing cadmium stress tolerance in maize by exogenous application of silicon nanoparticles” in an experiment with a completely randomized design (CRD) with the factorial arrangement was used with five different treatments of silicon nanoparticles Si NPs (To = control group, T1 = Si NPs @ 100 ppm, T2 = Si NPs @ 200 ppm, T3 = Si NPs @ 300 ppm and T4 = Si NPs @ 400 ppm) and three cadmium treatment (Co= control, C1 = Cd @ 15ppm and T2 = Cd @ 30 ppm( on a maize hybrid (‘SF-9515’ F1 Single cross maize hybrid) and each replicated thrice. Results of the controlled experiment indicated that the Cd at 30 ppm affects the maize plants and reduced the morphological attributes such as shoot length (39.35 cm), shoot fresh weight (9.52 g) and shoot dry weight (3.20 g), leaf pigments such as chlorophyll a (0.55 mg/g FW), chlorophyll b (0.27 mg/g FW), total contents (0.84 mg/g FW) and carotenoids contents (0.19 µg/g FW), biochemicals traits such as TSP (4.85 mg/g FW), TP (252.94 nmol/g FW), TSAA (18.92 µmol g-1 FW), TSS (0.85 mg/g FW) and antioxidant activities such as POD (99.39 min-1 g-1 FW), CAT (81.58 min-1 g-1 FW), APX (2.04 min-1 g-1 FW), and SOD (172.79 min-1 g-1 FW) but root length (87.63 cm) and root fresh weight (16.43 g) and root dry weight (6.14 g) of maize and Cd concentration in the root (2.52 µg/g-1) and shoot (0.48 µg/g-1) were increased through the application of Cd. The silicon nanoparticles (Si-NPs) treatment significantly increased all measured attributes of maize. There is highest value was noted of all the parameters such as chlorophyll a (0.91 mg/g FW), chlorophyll b (0.57 mg/g FW), total chlorophyll contents (1.48 mg/g FW), total carotenoids contents (0.40 µg/g FW), TSP (6.12 mg/g FW), TP (384.56 nmol/g FW), TSAA (24.64 µmol g-1 FW), TSS (1.87 mg/g FW), POD (166.10 min-1 g-1 FW), CAT (149.54 min-1 g-1 FW), APX (3.49 min-1 g-1 FW), and SOD (225.57 min-1 g-1 FW) in which the treatment T4 were silicon nanoparticles added at the rate of 400 ppm compared to the control group