Impact assessment of silver nanoparticles on plant growth and soil bacterial diversity.

Pallavi Pallavi,A K Sharma,C M Mehta,Sandeep Arora,Rashmi Srivastava

doi:10.1007/s13205-016-0567-7

Pallavi Pallavi, A K Sharma + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-016-0567-7

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Abstract

The present study was carried out to investigate the impact of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) on the growth of three different crop species, wheat (Triticum aestivum, var. UP2338), cowpea (Vigna sinensis, var. Pusa Komal), and Brassica (Brassica juncea, var. Pusa Jai Kisan), along with their impact on the rhizospheric bacterial diversity. Three different concentrations (0, 50 and 75 ppm) of AgNPs were applied through foliar spray. After harvesting, shoot and root parameters were compared, and it was observed that wheat was relatively unaffected by all AgNP treatments. The optimum growth promotion and increased root nodulation were observed at 50 ppm treatment in cowpea, while improved shoot parameters were recorded at 75 ppm in Brassica. To observe the impact of AgNPs on soil bacterial community, sampling was carried out from the rhizosphere of these crops at 20 and 40 days after the spraying of AgNPS. The bacterial diversity of these samples was analyzed by both cultural and molecular techniques (denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis). It is clearly evident from the results that application of AgNPs changes the soil bacterial diversity and this is further influenced by the plant species grown in that soil. Also, the functional bacterial diversity differed with different concentrations of AgNPs.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s13205-016-0567-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Highlights

The use of nanotechnology is increasing in various fields like information technology, energy, consumer goods, medical sector, and agriculture
Arora et al (2012), while studying the impact of gold NPs on the growth profile and seed yield of Brassica juncea under field conditions, found that out of five different concentrations of gold NPs (0, 10, 25, 50, and 100 ppm), application of 10 ppm concentration resulted in the optimum increase in growth and seed yield of the plants
Copper NPs were shown to be toxic to two crop species, mung bean (Phaseolus radiatus) and wheat (Triticum aestivum), as demonstrated by the reduced seedling growth rate (Lee et al 2008)

Summary

Introduction

The use of nanotechnology is increasing in various fields like information technology, energy, consumer goods, medical sector, and agriculture. Microorganisms are especially sensitive to environmental changes (Sadowsky and Schortemeyer 1997); the structure and abundance of the microorganism community may shift in response to foreign nanomaterials (Ge et al 2011; Kumar et al 2011; Tong et al 2007) Many nanomaterials, such as carbon nanotubes (Kang et al 2007; Liu et al 2009), graphene-based nanomaterials (Hu et al 2010), iron-based nanoparticles (Auffan et al 2009), silver (Sondi and Salopek-Sondi 2004), and copper, zinc, and titanium oxide nanoparticles (Kasemets et al 2009), have been reported to be toxic to pure cultures of bacteria. Pusa Komal), under greenhouse conditions and their influence on rhizospheric bacterial diversity

Materials and methods

Results and discussion

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Conclusion