ENHANCING WHEAT PRODUCTIVITY THROUGH THE APPLICATION OF CHITOSAN NANOPARTICLES (CSNPS) IN MITIGATING NACL-INDUCED SALT STRESS

Abstract

A pot experiment was conducted at Agronomy Shade House, Department of Agronomy, Hajee Mohammad Danesh Science and Technology University, Dinajpur-5200, Bangladesh during November 2022 to April 2023 to examine the salt alleviating effects of chitosan nanoparticles in wheat (BWMRI Gom 2).The conducted experiment comprised six treatments, denoted as, i) S0Cs0 (0 mM NaCl + 0 ppm CsNPs), ii) S1Cs0 (100 mM NaCl + 0 ppm CsNPs), iii) S1Cs1 (100 mM NaCl + 100 ppm CsNPs), ⅰv) S1Cs2 (100 mM NaCl + 200 ppm CsNPs), v) S1Cs3 (100 mM NaCl + 400 ppm CsNPs), and vi) S1Cs4 (100 mM NaCl + 600 ppm CsNPs). The experiment was laid out in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. Seeds were sown in each pot and all operations up to maturity were done when necessary, as well as data were recorded in time. The recorded data were analyzed through using MSTAT-C program, and mean difference was compared by Duncan's Multiple Range Test (DMRT) at 5% level of probability. The results indicated that salt stress significantly and negatively affected the morphology, growth, phenology, physiology, yield contributing traits, yield indices and chemical constituents in plants, while application CsNPs in salt stressed-plants alleviated the adverse effects of salt stress, and positively influenced of those traits of BWMRI Gom-2. Most of the cases, the treatment Cs4 under salt stress conditions (100 mM) showed the most positive effects. At salt stress, the treatment S1Cs4 (100 mM + 600 ppm) showed the highest plant height, leaf area, fresh and dry weight (leaves, stem and roots), phonological parameters, chlorophyll content and better water status, maintain canopy temperature, maintain cell membrane stability and maintain soil pH, maximum spike length (13.83 cm), number of spikelets spike-1 (15.66), number of grains spike 1(35.89), grains wt. spike- 1 (1.25g) and 100 grains weight (3.50 g), highest grain yield (1.25 g), stover yield (2.16 g), biological yield (3.41 g) and highest harvest index (39.33%). In higher salt (100 mM) with Cs4 treatments showed the highest values of Ca2+ (2.14 mg g-1 DW), K+ (1.95 mg g-1 DW), N (2.13 mg g-1 DW), protein (12.39 %) and lowest value of Na+(4.42 mg g-1 DW. These findings suggest that application CsNPs effectively alleviated the adverse effects of salinity stress, enhancing the salt tolerance of wheat (BWMRI Gom-2). Moreover, it was observed that applying 600 ppm CsNPs proved effective under 100 mM salt stress condition.