Nanosilicon: An approach for abiotic stress mitigation and sustainable agriculture

Abstract

Abiotic stresses causing extensive yield loss in various crops globally. Over the past few decades, the application of silicon nanoparticles (nSi) has emerged as one of the abiotic stress mitigators. The initial responses of plants are shown by the biogenesis of reactive oxygen species (ROS) to sustain cellular/organellar integrity to ensure in vivo operation of metabolic functions by regulating physiological and biochemical pathways during stress conditions. Plants have evolved various antioxidative systems to balance/maintain the process of homeostasis via enzymatic and non-enzymatic activities to repair the losses. In the adverse environment, supplementation of Si mitigates the stress condition and improved the growth and development of plants. Its ameliorative effects were correlated with the enhanced antioxidant enzymes activities to maintain the equilibrium between the ROS generation and reduction. However, there are limited studies covered the role of nSi in the abiotic stress condition. This review addresses the accumulation and/or uptake of nSi in several crops and its mode of action linked with improved plants’ growth and tolerance capabilities to confer sustainable agriculture.

Role of silica nanoparticles in enhancing drought tolerance of cereal crops

“…Plant roots and leaves have the capability to absorb NPs. The absorption and accumulation of NPs can vary among different plant species, depending on their uptake mechanisms, physical characteristics, transport, and distribution in specific plant parts which may trigger defence mechanisms in response to NPs (Verma et al, 2022). Si may be administered either directly to the root system as basal dressing (Fetsiukh et al, 2021), or as foliar spray onto plant's leaves (Sharf-Eldin et al, 2023).…”

“…Amongst NPs, the existing evidence indicates that SiNPs mitigate the negative impacts of DS or substantially enhance cereal crop growth and development (Rasheed et al, 2022). Application of SiNPs through irrigation and foliar spray has proven to be an effective approach in increasing crop productivity, enhancing the quality of grains, especially under stress conditions and supporting root development or photosynthetic CO2 assimilation (Dhakate et al, 2022;Verma et al, 2022). Overall, DS leads to a reduction in the uptake of important minerals like calcium, manganese, nitrogen, iron, sodium, silicon, copper, zinc, etc (El-Mogy et al, 2022).…”

Silicon nanoparticles in sustainable agriculture: synthesis, absorption, and plant stress alleviation

“…The unique features and advantages of SiNPs including nanoscale sizes, nutritional effects, surface properties and porous nature, endowing them versatile functions in nano-enabled agriculture such as plant growth stimulator, nanocarrier, and soil conditioner ( Figure 1 ; Ji et al., 2018 ; Rastogi et al., 2019 ; Mahawar et al., 2023 ). To date, numerous laboratory and field studies affirm that SiNPs, as plant growth stimulator, can enhance plant resistance to various biotic (e.g., insect pest, pathogen disease) and abiotic (e.g., metal stress, drought stress, salt stress) stress, thereby promoting plant growth, yield and quality ( Bansal et al., 2022 ; Verma et al., 2022 ; Wang et al., 2022a ). In addition, the porous nature of SiNPs makes them ideal carriers for delivering chemicals (e.g., fertilizer, pesticide, plant growth regulator) and bioactive molecules (e.g., DNA, protein) in agricultural production and plant biotechnology ( Mathur and Roy, 2020 ; Zhang et al., 2023 ).…”