Nano-Biochar Enhances Wheat Crop Productivity by Vindicating the Effects of Drought: In Relation to Physiological and Phenological Stages

Muhammad Aown Sammar Raza; Adnan Noor Shah; Muhammad Asghar Shahid; Muhammad Nawaz; Muhammad Arif Ibrahim; Rashid Iqbal; Muhammad Usman Aslam; Sezai Ercisli; Qurban Ali

doi:10.1021/acsomega.3c01629

Nano-Biochar Enhances Wheat Crop Productivity by Vindicating the Effects of Drought: In Relation to Physiological and Phenological Stages

ACS Omega. 2023 Oct 2;8(41):37808-37819. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.3c01629. eCollection 2023 Oct 17.

Authors

Muhammad Aown Sammar Raza¹, Adnan Noor Shah², Muhammad Asghar Shahid¹, Muhammad Nawaz², Muhammad Arif Ibrahim¹, Rashid Iqbal¹, Muhammad Usman Aslam¹, Sezai Ercisli³, Qurban Ali⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Agriculture and Environment, The Islamia University of Bahawalpur, Bahawalpur 63100, Pakistan.
² Department of Agricultural Engineering, Khwaja Fareed University of Engineering and Information Technology, Rahim Yar Khan 64200, Punjab, Pakistan.
³ Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, Erzurum 25240, Turkey.
⁴ Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, University of the Punjab, Lahore 54590, Pakistan.

Abstract

Climatic changes are major hindrances to crop productivity. Likewise, water scarcity is the major obstacle during different physiological and phenological stages, which ultimately reduces the wheat crop yield. So, there is a dire need to adopt modern approaches such as soil amendments, i.e., using nano-biochar (NBC) to boost soil health and wheat crop productivity. Therefore, a case study was performed in the wire house of the Agronomy Department, Faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences, Islamia University of Bahawalpur. CRD (completely randomized design) with four treatments of NBC, i.e., NBC0 (control), NBC1 (0.5%), NBC2 (1.00%), NBC3 (1.5%), and four drought levels D0 = control, D1 = drought at tillering, D2 = drought at flowering, and D3 = drought at grain filling was used. The hypothesis for the case study was to investigate if the NBC increases crop productivity by boosting physiological and chemical attributes under different drought conditions at different phenological stages. Results showed that among NBC treatments, NBC2 (1.00%) showed 37.10% increase in peroxidase activity, 28.60% in superoxide dismutase, 63.33% in catalase, 22.03% in ascorbate peroxidase, and 6.66% in plant height as compared to other NBC treatments, whereas among drought treatments, D0 = control stood out in comparison to water deficit treatments at critical growth and development stages, statistically analyzed data revealed that D0 was able to generate plant height 6.17 times more, 12.76% in the number of grains per spike, 4.60% in osmotic potential, and 2.96% in stomatal conductance activities of wheat crop. D3 and NBC0 were identified as treatment levels with the statistically lowest growth and yield returns, respectively. It showed a decrease of 4.69% in leaf relative water contents, 12.33% in water potential, and 23.64% in fertile tillers. It was recommended that drought is avoided at any critical growth, particularly at the grain-filling stage. The use of organic substances (fertilizers) must be promoted as they possess soil and crop health-promoting properties and also reduce different management expenses (fertilizer cost). Using NBC helps boost crop growth in the presence of a limited water supply. However, extensive research is needed to find out the impact of these organic substances (humic acid, farmyard manure, and NBC) on different crops, particularly on wheat, under stress conditions.