Abstract
Abiotic stresses, including drought, detrimentally affect the growth and productivity of many economically important crop plants, leading to significant yield losses, which can result in food shortages and threaten the sustainability of agriculture. Balancing plant growth and stress responses is one of the most important functions of agricultural application to optimize plant production. In this study, we initially report that copper nanoparticle priming positively regulates drought stress responses in maize. The copper nanoparticle priming plants displayed enhanced drought tolerance indicated by their higher leaf water content and plant biomass under drought as compared with water-treated plants. Moreover, our data showed that the treatment of copper nanoparticle on plants increased anthocyanin, chlorophyll and carotenoid contents compared to water-treated plants under drought stress conditions. Additionally, histochemical analyses with nitro blue tetrazolium and 3,3′-diaminobenzidine revealed that reactive oxygen species accumulation of priming plants was decreased as a result of enhancement of reactive oxygen species scavenging enzyme activities under drought. Furthermore, our comparative yield analysis data indicated applying copper nanoparticles to the plant increased total seed number and grain yield under drought stress conditions. Our data suggest that copper nanoparticle regulates plant protective mechanisms associated with drought tolerance, which is a promising approach for the production of drought-tolerant crop plants.
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Acknowledgements
This project was supported by grants from project coded KHCN-TB.10C/13-18 to SH under the program titled “Science and Technology for the Sustainable Development of the Northwest Region” of Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam. We thank Veronica Lee, University of Missouri, Columbia, USA for her English editing.
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DN and CH designed research; CH, HN, NL, KN, HN, HL, AN, and ND, performed research; DN and SH contributed research materials, reagents and analytic tools; CH, NL, and HN analyzed the data; and HN, CH and DN wrote the manuscript.
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Van Nguyen, D., Nguyen, H.M., Le, N.T. et al. Copper Nanoparticle Application Enhances Plant Growth and Grain Yield in Maize Under Drought Stress Conditions. J Plant Growth Regul 41, 364–375 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-021-10301-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-021-10301-w