Role of brassinosteroids in horticultural crops (Reviews)

Abstract

With the progress of chemical synthesis technology, structurally modified brassinosteroids (BRs) with greater stability, under field conditions have been synthesized on a commercial scale and registered as plant growth regulators for specific horticultural crops. In both fundamental and application-oriented research, BRs and their analogues play prominent roles in various physiological processes including, seed development and germination, flower sex expression, fruit development, improvement of quantity and quality of crops, and resistance to various biotic and abiotic stresses. It is worthy to note here that the involvement of BRs in plant protection from adverse environmental stress and pesticides seems to have good prospects, since BRs appear nontoxic and environmentally friendly. It is well known that horticultural crops have a great variety of produce organs as well as high yield and output values. Moreover, their production is susceptible to sub-optimum environmental conditions, especially in facilities cultivation. Thus, practical application of BRs to horticultural crops for enhancing crops production and protection may have a promising prospect in the near future.

The combined formulation of brassinolide and pyraclostrobin increases biomass and seed yield by improving photosynthetic capacity in Arabidopsis thaliana

“…In this study, we comprehensively compared the effects of BL, Pyr and BL + Pyr on the biomass, yield and photosynthesis of A. thaliana . Exogenous application of BRs or Pyr has been reported to improve plant growth in some cases ( Amaro et al., 2019 ; Lin, 2020 ; Padhiary et al., 2020 ). However, the growth-promoting effects of BRs are not always apparent, and Pyr inevitably causes phytotoxicity ( Khripach et al., 2000 ; Nason et al., 2007 ; Vriet et al., 2012 ; Debona et al., 2016 ; Pedersen et al., 2017 ).…”

“…Furthermore, the physiological effects of BRs are more noticeable when the plant suffers from adverse environmental stress, leading BRs to protect against the pressures that plants may eventually experience ( Sharma et al., 2018 ; Ahammed et al., 2020 ; Wang et al., 2020b ). As reported, BRs and their analogs have been widely used as regulators of plant growth in agriculture to improve quality and yield ( Vriet et al., 2012 ; Ali, 2017 ; Tong and Chu, 2018 ; Padhiary et al., 2020 ). However, the regulation of growth by endogenous BRs is temporally and spatially specific, and the effectiveness of exogenous BRs is susceptible to the time of application, treatment frequency, dose, and complex field conditions ( Zu et al., 2019 ; Lin, 2020 ; Hwang et al., 2021 ).…”