In
recent years, there has been a growing interest in strengthening
and intensifying local food production in order to mitigate the famine
in some countries and the adverse effect of unpredictability in vegetable
prices in other ones. As a result, home gardens are a strategy to
improve household food security and nutrition in a wide variety of
developing countries. Home gardens have a limited budget for their
initial development; in this work, we propose a low-cost option of
the reuse of expired analgesics as domestic germinators, which are
highly commercialized medicines in the world. The selection of these
active principles suggests a probable stimulation of the ethylene
pathway, and this was analyzed through docking studies on the ETR-1
active site. For the present work, two vegetables with nutritional
value and wide human consumption were selected, Lactuca
sativa (lettuce) and Daucus carota (carrot), and these seeds were sprayed in different concentrations
with acetyl salic acid, diclofenac, commercial root agent Radix 1500
(positive control), and water as a negative control. The experiments
were carried out with 30 pots for each experimental and control group,
and the experiment lasted 2 months, in which they were watered four
times a week with the respective active ingredients, while maintaining
a humidity of 80% and a neutral pH. We observed in the results that
the vegetables sprayed with acetylsalicylic acid had a higher germination
percentage and a higher average growth than the negative control group
and the group sprayed with diclofenac. In addition, upon comparing
the germination and growth data of lettuce and carrot for acetylsalicylic
acid and Radix 1500, these are very similar, indicating that both
chemical compounds have a positive effect on the development of these
vegetables. With this, it can be concluded that controlled and continuous
amounts of acetylsalicylic acid have a positive effect on lettuce
and carrot crops, and the above will help improve performance, functionality,
and adaptability for lettuce and carrots in home gardens.
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