Silicon fertilization improves the maize (Zea maysL.) performance under limited moisture supply

Abstract

Field crops are subjected to numerous inconsiderate climatic hazards that negatively affect physiological processes, growth and yield. Drought is one of the major abiotic factors that limits the agricultural productivity especially in the arid and semi-arid areas of the globe. Silicon (Si) is a naturally occurring beneficial nutrient which modulates plant growth and development events and has been known to improve the crop tolerance to abiotic stresses. With the objective to investigate the role of silicon nutrition on maize hybrids under limited moisture supply, a two year field study was conducted during 2010-11 at Post Graduate Research Station (PARS), University of Agriculture Faisalabad, Pakistan. We evaluated growth of two maize hybrids P-33H25 and FH-810 under well watered (100% field capacity) and water deficit situation (60% field capacity) as affected by Si application. Silicon was added in soil @ 100 mg/kg using Calcium Silicate as source. Water deficit condition significantly reduced agro-morphological and physiological attributes of maize plants. Silicon application significantly increased the plant height, leaf area index, yield and related attributes along with improvement in photosynthetic rate, leaf water status and osmotic adjustment under limited moisture supply. It was concluded that silicon application to droughtstressed maize enhanced its growth and yield owing to improved photosynthetic rate, higher osmotic adjustment, increased water status and lowered transpiration.

Silicon as a Beneficial Element and as an Essential Plant Nutrient: An Outlook (Review)

“…Silicon treatment stimulated the growth of most plant species and increased the dry weight, total fruit number, total marketable fruit yield of strawberry (Miyake and Takahashi, 1986), increased leaf area, plant height, root volume and biomass of alfalfa (Wang and Han, 2007), increased the yield of common bean (Zuccarini, 2008) and seed yield of soybean, common bean and peanut (Crusciol et al, 2013), simulated plant height and stem diameter of chrysanthemum (Sivanesan et al, 2013), enhanced plant height and shoot dry weight of three rice cultivars (Shi et al, 2013) and rice biomass and yield (Savant et al, 1997;Farooq et al, 2016), produced the highest grain yield of wheat (Maamoun, 2014). Silicon application significantly increased plant height, leaf area index, and grain yield of maize (Amin et al, 2016), improved plant height, number of branches and leaves, fresh and dry weight of sweet pepper (Tantawy et al, 2015), increased plant height and number of branches per plant, number of head per plant, number of seeds per head and straw end seed yield of Egyptian clover (Ibrahim et al, 2015), increased plant height, root length, leaf area index of cotton (Adrees et al, 2015), and improved biological yield of bean (Abou Baker et al, 2012). Application of Nano-silica enhanced the germination and growth development of common bean (Alsaeedi et al, 2017), and the number of leaves and branches and seed dry weight of soybean (Suciaty et al, 2018).…”

“…Gunes et al (2007) found that oxidative membrane damage was protected by Si treatment of tomato and spinach grown under toxicity of Na + , B and salt. Water content in Plant:Silicon application improved water status of rice (Savant et al, 1999), maize (Gao et al, 2004;Kaya et al, 2006;Amin et al, 2016), tomato (Romero-Aranda et al, 2006;Gao et al, 2006), wheat (Tuna et al, 2008;Ahmed et al, 2012), gerbera cut (Kazemi et al, 2012), bean (Abou-Baker et al, 2012), sorghum (Hattori et al, 2005;, 2011 a; 2011 b), papper (Pereira et al, 2013), and soybean (Shen et al, 2010). The Si treated plants maintained higher water content than those without Sitreatment when grown under drought condition (Ma et al, 2001;Kaya et al, 2006;Gong and Chen, 2012).…”

“…Recently, studies showed that Si addition had increased the chlorophyll a and carotene contents in wheat (Hellal et al, 2012), the contents of photosynthetic pigments in wheat (Gong et al, 2005), the photosynthetic rate in maize (Amin et al, 2016) and in wheat (Hijiboland et al, 2017), the chlorophyll of chrysanthemum (Sivanesan et al, 2013). It has been also found that foliar spray by Si increased chlorophyll pigments, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b and carotenoids in leaves of wheat (Ibrahim et al, 2016).…”

“…Irrigation water use efficiency (IWUE), water use efficiency (WUE). Economic water productivity (EWP), and relative leaf water content have been found to increase as result of Si addition to plants grown under salt stress (Shen et al, 2010;Gong and Chen, 2012;Abou-Baker et al, 2012;Amin et al, 2016). Improvement of water status in plants leaves was maintained at high level as a result of Si addition (Lobato et al, 2009;Ahmed et al, 2011 a;2011 b) which has been attributed to reduced water loss via transpiration.…”

“…The role of Si in increasing drought stress occurs by several physical, physiological and biochemical processes, i. e. (i) maintaining erection of leaves and structure of xylem vessels, water balance and photosynthetic efficiency (Hattori et al, 2005;; Ahmed et al, 2011 a; 2011 b), (ii) stimulating the activities of antioxidant enzymes (Gong et al, 2005;Kiang et al, 2005;Wang et al, 2011) and photosynthetic rate (Gong et al, 2005;Chen et al, 2010;Amin et al, 2016), and (iii) increasing the concentrations of antioxidant metabolites (Liang, 1999;Al-Aghabary, et al, 2004;Zhu et al, 2004;Liang et al, 2006 b;Qian et al, 2006).…”