To prevent environmental pollution, promote ecological restoration and impart production sustainability in biomass crops, optimization of mineral fertilization regimes is strategically required under changing climatic scenarios. There exist research gaps regarding optimal use of nitrogen (N), phosphorous (P) and potassium (K) fertilizers for the fertilizer-responsive cultivars of forage legumes like cowpea under decreasing soil fertility in semi-arid regions. Therefore, a multi-year field experiment was executed to study yield attributes, green and dry matter yields along with nutritional quality attributes of forage cowpea. The treatments were comprised of different N-P-K levels viz. F0=(0-0-0), F1=(150-0-0 kg·ha-1), F2=(150-100-0 kg·ha-1) and F3=(150-100-100 kg·ha-1). The findings revealed that F3 fertilization regime surpassed rest of treatments by recording the maximum plant population, plant height, leaf area index, plants fresh and dry weights, which led to the highest green forage yield (73% and 5.8% higher than control and following treatment of F2, respectively). For dry matter yield, all fertilization regimes performed better than control, however those were statistically at par to each other. Moreover, F3 treatment exhibited 4.4% and 1.6% higher crude protein and ether extractable fat respectively, compared to the following treatment of F2 treatment that remained at par with F3 for total ash content. Contrastingly, the control treatment remained superior by giving the minimum crude fiber content which could be attributed to dwarf plants produced in the absence of fertilizers because stem length tends to contribute the major portion of f iber content in cowpea. Thus, 150-100-100 kg·ha-1 N-P-K might be recommended to cowpea growers for boosting biomass productivity and nutritional quality, however further field investigations need to assess the impact of these fertilization regimes on biological N fixation process and solar radiation capture by cowpea plants under irrigated and dry semi-arid conditions.
An exciting new window of opportunity has opened up for environmentally responsible farming with the advent of the nanotechnology era: the role of nanoparticles (NPs) to mitigate abiotic stresses. NPs have unique physiochemical characteristics that make them an attractive study subject. Rice growth and yield are severely inhibited by salinity, a major detrimental abiotic factor. However, the impact of NPs on rice seeds germination characteristics and physio-biochemical phenomena under salt stress conditions remains poorly understood. Accordingly, we intended to look at how zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NPs) affected germination processes and the early seedling stage while the rice plants (Kargi and CSR 30 rice genotypes) were put under salinity stress. Different germination characteristics parameters were considered, e.g., germination percentage (GP) relative seed germination rate (RGR), and seed vigour index (SVI) determined after eight days of treatment with ZnO-NPs at a concentration of 50 mg/L on rice seed. After passing the germination test, the seeds were placed in Hoagland hydroponic solution and given another week of ZnO-NPs treatment to evaluate the seedling growth and phyto-biochemical characteristics, such as shoot height and root length, inhibition percentage of shoot height and root length, chlorophyll and carotenoid stability index, chlorophyll and carotenoid inhibition percentage, malondialdehyde (MAD) content and antioxidant enzymatic activities (SOD, APX).This investigation demonstrated that 50 mg/L ZnO-NPs have the potential to alleviate the effect of salt stress on rice genotypes during the germination stage.
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