Sustainable Production of Tomato Plants (Solanum lycopersicum L.) under Low-Quality Irrigation Water as Affected by Bio-Nanofertilizers of Selenium and Copper

Abstract

Under the global water crisis, utilizing low-quality water sources in agriculture for irrigation has offered an effective solution to address the shortage of water. Using an excess of low-quality water sources may cause serious risks to the environment, which threaten crop safety and human health. Three kinds of irrigation water (0.413, 1.44, and 2.84 dS m−1) were selected under foliar-applied bio-nanofertilizers of selenium (100 mg L−1) and copper (100 mg L−1) in individual and/or combined application. The nanofertilizers were tested on the production of tomato under greenhouse. After harvesting, the quality of tomato yield and soil biology was evaluated. Using saline water for irrigation caused many main features in this study such as increasing the accumulation of salts, soil organic matter, and CaCO3 in soil by 84.6, 32.3, and 18.4%, respectively, compared to control. The highest tomato yield (2.07 kg plant−1) and soluble solids content (9.24%) were recorded after irrigation with low water quality (2.84 dS m−1) and nano-Cu fertilization. The plant enzymatic antioxidants and soil biological activity were decreased in general due to the salinity stress of irrigation water. After 30 days from transplanting, all studied soil biological parameters (soil microbial counts and enzymes) were higher than the same parameters at harvesting (80 days) under different categories of water quality. The values of all soil biological parameters were decreased by increasing water salinity. This study was carried out to answer the question of whether the combined nanofertilizers of selenium and copper can promote tomato production under saline water irrigation. Further investigations are still needed concerning different applied doses of these nanofertilizers.

Biological Nanofertilizers to Enhance Growth Potential of Strawberry Seedlings by Boosting Photosynthetic Pigments, Plant Enzymatic Antioxidants, and Nutritional Status

“…There are studies on bio-nano-copper as a guard against plant pathogens such as on absinthium ( Artemisia absinthium L.) [ 23 ], ginger ( Zingiber officinale Roscoe) [ 24 ], and guar ( Cyamopsis tetragonoloba L.) [ 25 ]. However, there are very few studies on the effects of Se and CuO bio-nanofertilizers on other crops such as banana [ 11 ] and tomato [ 26 ]. The uptake of nanofertilizers through soil or foliar application mainly depends on the characterization of the soil, plant species, and the kind of nanofertilizer [ 27 ].…”

Biological Nanofertilizer for Horticultural Crops: A Diagrammatic Mini-Review

“…Depending on the kind of nanofertilizers and the applied dose, impacts may either inhibit or activate enzymes, which control the uptake of water by seedlings or seeds, level of gibberellin, and production of abscisic acid (Feregrino-Perez et al 2018). Other physiological, biochemical and antioxidant properties of horticultural crops have been enhanced after application of nanofertilizers (mainly biological ones) such as bionano-Se and -Cu on banana (Shalaby et al 2022a) and tomato (Saffan et al 2022) and bionano-Se on radish (Huang et al 2023). Therefore, the applications of nanotechnology in agriculture, and particularly horticulture, may provide sustainable solutions for many problems facing this sector (Bala et al 2022;Nongbet et al 2022).…”

Biofortification of Vegetables under Stress Conditions Using Biological Nano-Selenium: A Mini-Review

“…The main approaches of biofortification include fertilization or agronomic strategies, conventional crop breeding, and genetic engineering or biotechnology methods (Kaur et al 2020;Lal et al 2020;Mir et al 2020). Several materials on biofortification were published which focus on the targeted nutrients such as calcium (Pessoa et al 2021), copper (Saffan et al 2022), iodine (Izydorczyk et al 2021), iron (Buturi et al 2023, lithium (Naeem e al. 2021), magnesium (Mg), selenium (Cheng et al 2023), andzinc (Buturi et al 2023).…”

“…This product can promote cultivated plants under different stresses such as heat stress (Seliem et al 2020), drought and heat stress (El-Saadony et al 2021), drought and heat stress (Shalaby et al 2021), salinity (El-Badri et al 2022, organic pollutants (Liu et al 2022), heavy metals stress (Zhu et al 2022), andnano-toxicity (Kamali-Andani et al 2023). Many benefits were reported for nano-Se on several agro-cultivation practices such as improving the rate of germination under salinity stress (Ghazi et al 2022), reducing the hazards of irrigation with low water quality (Saffan et al 2022), acclimatization of banana Seedlings (Shalaby et al 2022a), and enhance rooting of strawberry seedlings (El-Bialy et al 2023). Nano-Se can also improve lettuce growth, nutrient availability, and photosynthesis (Cheng et al 2023), protect melon plants from insect infestations and pathogens by enhancing their resistance to biotic stress (Kang et al 2022), enhance cowpea photosynthesis process and/or photosynthetic pigments, and antioxidant capacity (Lanza et al 2021), and improve tomato by promoting plant enzyme activities especially phenylalanine ammonia-lyase, β-1,3-glucanase, superoxide dismutase (Joshi et al 2021).…”