Abstract
Gibberellins (GAs) are growth hormones strongly involved in a wide variety of physiological activities. Currently, gibberellins are commercially used to enhance phenotypic characteristics, earliness, and productivity of many vegetable and ornamental crops. In this work, the efficacy of supplementation of low levels of gibberellic acid (0, 10−8, 10−6, and 10−4 M GA3) through the mineral nutrient solution of a floating system on yield and quality of leaf lettuce and rocket plants was tested. The marketability of plants was lost when 10−4 M GA3 was added to the mineral nutrient solution. This study demonstrated that the addition of 10−4 M GA3 exceeded the acceptable threshold for use in hydroponics production systems. Below the concentration of 10−4 M, the presence of GA3 in the mineral nutrient solutions (MNS), especially at 10−6 M GA3, stimulated plant growth and enhanced the yield. Various morphological and physiological traits were enhanced by GA3 treatments (biomass accumulation, leaf expansion, stomatal conductance, water use efficiency (WUE), Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), etc.), with superimposable trends in both lettuce and rocket. The addition of 10−6 M GA3 to the nutrient solution of a hydroponic floating system can promote growth and quality of lettuce and rocket plants.
Highlights
Consumers’ consciousness of the importance of eating healthy foods [1,2,3,4,5] has raised notably
Various morphological and physiological traits were enhanced by GA3 treatments (biomass accumulation, leaf expansion, stomatal conductance, water use efficiency (WUE), Nitrogen use efficiency (NUE), etc.), with superimposable trends in both lettuce and rocket
We found that the increase of biomass accumulation and the changes in biomass allocation caused by exogenous GA3 supply (10−6 M GA3 ), positively affected the yield of leaf lettuce and rocket with an increase of 44.6% and 42.9%, respectively
Summary
Consumers’ consciousness of the importance of eating healthy foods [1,2,3,4,5] has raised notably. As a consequence of this phenomenon, the demand for vegetables increased over the past 25 years with the result that the world’s value of trade in vegetables overcame that of cereals [8] To fulfill this growing request for vegetables, it became necessary to enhance the productivity of vegetable crops with environmentally friendly, cost-effective, and easy to use techniques. These goals might be reached in many ways, such as genetic improvement, innovative cultivation systems, grafting, growth promoting microorganism, and plant growth regulators [9,10,11,12,13]. They induce transcription of genes involved in cell elongation and cell division occurring
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