The effects of silver nanoparticles on germination characteristics of Barley genotypes

Nanotechnology involves the construction and exploitation of materials and systems through control of the matter at the nanoscale. Nanotechnology is the use of scientific and technical knowledge, which has great potential for improving the quality of human life in various fields such as agriculture and manufacturing. The technology using nanoparticles and biological nanosensors can improve the rapid identification of pathogens and plants, against pests, increase the ability of plants to absorb nutrients, reducing the use of pesticides and also by monitoring soil conditions, plant growth on abiotic can maximize the utilization of inputs conventionally such as fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation and environmental conditions such as temperature, solar radiation and humidity, causing increased food production and food supply.

: In this study, the effect of nanosilver particles was evaluated on germination and seedling growth of ten barely plant genotypes in a factorial experiment based on completely randomized block design with three replications, under laboratory conditions at 2015 y in Ilam university. In the experiment, examined factors included different concentrations of silver (0, 1% and 5%) and 6 varieties and 4 lines of cultivated barley. Traits such as germination percentage, germination index, germination rate, germination energy, vigor index, root length, shoot length and seedling length were measured.

Analysis of variance showed that the different concentrations of nanosilver (0, 1% and 5%) were significantly different at 1%. for germination percentage, germination index, germination rate, germination energy and vigor index. In other word, different silver nanoparticles had different effects on traits such as germination percentage, germination index, and germination energy and so on. Also significant differences at 1% were observed among genotypes for all traits studied indicating genotypic diversity in the population studied. Genotype and nanosilver interaction had significant difference (P>0.01) for germination percentage, germination index, and germination rate and vigor index but for energy germination, root length, shoot length and seedling length were not significant. This means that different barley genotypes had various responses to varied silver nanoparticles treatments. According to correlation results, the germination percentage and germination index had the highest correlation (1) and the lowest correlation was observed between germination percentage and length of Plumule (0.007). According to principal component analysis investigating the diversity of traits among genotypes, two components were extracted with eigenvalues more than one. Where, 65.43 and 22.92 percent of the variance were explained by these two components, respectively overall 88.35% of the total variance. The first component was assigned as a component indicating germination parameters (such as: germination percentage, germination index, germination energy) . The second component, assigned as a component indicating growth. Nosrat, Izeh, Ten sarasary and mb-88-2 genotypes had the highest amount of germination characteristics. Also the principal components analysis to examine variability between different levels of nanoparticles showed that two components with eigenvalues over than one were extracted which explained 74.73 and 25.27 percent of the variance, respectively, all amount of variance was explained. The first component nominated as the germination parameters and shoot length and the second component as root and seedling length. Moreover, according to PCA results for examining the diversity of traits between different levels of nanoparticles, the highest amounts of traits were observed (P>0.01) of nanoparticles in comparison with control. On the other hand, 1 and 5% levels of nanoparticles did not make much difference with each other, for different traits. These observations also confirmed the results of mean comparisons. In conclusion, results showed that the silver nanoparticles increase the germination parameters such as germination percentage, germination index, germination rate, germination energy and vigor index though did not affect shoot length. The results could indicate intrinsic and practical effects and impacts of silver nanoparticles on biology.