Salinity stress and different types of nano silicon's effects on lupine morphology and biochemical accumulations

Abstract

Drug and food industries employ lupine (Lupinus termis). Saline irrigation water is one of the main obstacles to spread of lupine growing in Egypt's reclamation regions. Productivity of plants grown under salty irrigation water can be improved by using silicon nanoparticles (SiNPs) or functionalized silica nanoparticles (FSiNPs). Lupine plant can be harmed by saline water, especially if it includes sodium chloride; consequently, it was projected that lupine production would fail in Egypt's reclaimed soil, where sodium chloride-containing groundwater is used as the principal irrigation source. In this work, Si types were applied to the leaves of lupine to aid in their response to sodium chloride in to lessen the damaging effects of sodium chloride on them for increasing their output in the recently reclaimed regions. Si types were applied to lupine leaves at 0, 1, 2 mM SiNPs, and 1, 2 mM FSiNPs with fresh or saline water. Obtained results indicated that there were different improvements in the morphological characters, yield and fixed oil content, when SiNPs or FSiNPs were applied to lupine plants that had been exposed to saline water. In this way, SiNPs or FSiNPs adapted to saline water by increasing photosynthetic pigments (chlorophyll a or b and carotenoids), osmolytes (proline, soluble sugars, free amino acids), antioxidant molecules (phenols and flavonoids), membrane stability index and antioxidant enzymes (catalase, superoxide dismutase, peroxidase and glutathione reductase), while decreasing the values of hydrogen peroxide, malondialdehyde and electrolyte leakage. However, additions of FSiNPs under saline water performed better than SiNPs x saline water treatments. This study assists farmers in reducing the negative impacts of saline irrigation water on reclaimed fields.