Evaluating Positive and Negative Effects of Seven Biogenic Metal-based Nanoparticles on Seed Germination and Seedling of Nano-primed Wheat and Flax Seeds

Abstract

Abstract Seed germination is the first and the most susceptible stage in plant’s growing phases, so could be considered as an index to evaluate the effect of newly developed materials like nanoparticles (NPs), providing useful information for researchers. In our experiments, germination tests have been carried out in Petri plates, containing wet filter paper and nano-primed seeds. We had biosynthesized seven nanoparticles in our previous researches, including calcinated and non-calcinated zinc oxide, zinc, magnesium oxide, silver, copper and iron nanoparticles. The effect of these biogenic nanoparticles and their counterpart metallic salts including zinc acetate, magnesium sulphate, silver nitrate, copper sulphate and iron (III) chloride was studied on two popularly grown plants, wheat and flax, in laboratory condition to obtain preliminary information for future field experiments. Germination percentage, shoot length, root length, seedlings length, root-shoot ratio, seedling vigor index (SVI), shoot length stress tolerance index (SLSI) and root length stress tolerance index (RLSI) were calculated at 2nd and 7th days of the experiment. According to the results, the response of the plants to metal containing nanoparticles and metal salts mainly depend on type of the metal, plant species, concentration of the NP suspension or salt solution, condition of the exposure and the stage of growth.