Ameliorative effect of Ascorbic acid and biochar on Growth, and antioxidant enzymes on early Seedling of Sorghum under Salinity Conditions

Abstract

Salt stress is one of the major environmental stresses that limits the growth, antioxidant defense and sustainable crop productivity. A controlled study was done to determine the ameliorative effects of ascorbic acid (ASA) (0, 568, and 850 μM) and biochar (BC) (0, 2 and 4% BC [w/w]) on emergence, growth, and physiological attributes of sorghum grown under three salinity levels (0, 100, and 200 mM NaCl). High salinity stress significantly reduced emergence percentage, emergence rate, shoot length, root length, specific root length, total fresh weight (T.F.W), total dry weight (T.D.W), the activities of peroxidase (POD), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and catalase (CAT), but increased malondialdehyde (MDA) content. At the 200 mM NaCl level, 850 μM ASA with 4% BC enhanced most of the physiological attributes determined. At the 200 mM salinity level, total dry weight of sorghum seedling was increased by 42.7% and 23.1% at 2% and 4% BC levels, respectively as compared with non-BC control. The highest emergence rate at 200 mM NaCl was achieved at 4% BC and 850 μM ASA level. Our study suggested that the combined application of ASA and BC at appropriate amount and concentration on sorghum seedling may be helpful in salt tolerance and getting increase antioxidant enzymes that mitigate harms affected by saline problems worldwide.

Amelioration of lead toxicity by ascorbic acid in sugarcane (Saccharum officinarum L.) under in vitro condition

“…Heavy metal stress in low concentrations for short time triggers POD activity but prolonged stress with high metal concentration results in enzyme inactivation (Lin et al, 2015) could be the reason of declining POD activity after certain period of time that was restored in ascorbic acid pretreated calli. This restoring ability of ascorbic acid can be justi ed by the fact that ascorbic acid is involved in transcription and antioxidative metabolism of anti oxidant enzymes under stress conditions (Alves et al, 2021;Elsiddig et al, 2021).…”