Agriculture and Forestry

Nano particles may be more useful in comparison to bulk materials because they can pass the cell membrane of crops because of their general size. Nano-silicon or SiO2 is one of the major and frequently used engineered oxide nano particles in deferent fields. Quick germination of cultivated seeds and good seedling establishment are key factors to lentil production under salinity stress soil across arid and semi-arid regions. The present research was aimed at investigating the impacts of various nano-silicon dioxide treatments (0, 1 and 2 mM concentration) on seed germination of lentil under various NaCl concentrations (0, 50, 100 and 150 mM). For better understanding of nano-silicon by salinity stress interaction, the biplot method was used. The first two principal components (PC) axes (PC1 and PC2) explained 86% of the total variation. Results showed that germination significantly delayed by increasing salt stress and application of 1 mM nano-silicon dioxide (nSiO2) could considerably alleviate the adverse effect of salt stress on seed germination percentage, root and shoot length, seedling weight, mean germination time, seedling vigour index and seed reserve mobilization. This investigation results suggested that nSiO2 has favorable effect on lentil seed germination under salinity stress and it can be economic to use suitable concentration of this nano-particle in lentil production under salinity stress. Also, we found that exposure of seeds to SiO2 nano-particle caused both positive and negative effects on lentil growth.