Comparative analysis of the effect of silver nanoparticle and silver nitrate on morphological and anatomical parameters of banana under in vitro conditions

ABSTRACT

Toxicological studies of manufactured nanomaterials are getting increasingly significant due to their continuous environmental release through various commercial products. Thus in the study, banana variety Grandnaine was cultured in rooting media with various concentrations of AgNPs and AgNO₃ for studying its effect on shoot length, root length, length and width of the longest leaf, fresh weight and dry weight. Interestingly, all the morphological parameters analyzed were found not to have any significant variation under various treatments made. The anatomy of the roots of plants under different treatments showed slight increase in the number of metaxylem elements at higher concentrations of AgNO₃ compared to control. But the effect of AgNPs on number of metaxylem elements was at par with that of the control. The lack of toxicity of AgNP on banana tissue cultured plants as confirmed in the study offers opportunities to explore the development of NP based formulations for the enhancement of productivity of economically important plants like banana.

KEYWORDS:

• banana
• phytotoxicity
• silver nanoparticle
• tissue culture

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge DBT – MSUB- IPLSARE programmes in School of Biosciences, Mahatma Gandhi University for the help of UV- Visible spectroscopy and Centre for nanoscience and nanotechnology, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala, India for the help and support for the HR- TEM analysis of samples. Remakanthan A is thankful to KSCSTE, Government of Kerala for funding for a research project in YIPB scheme.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that we have no conflict of interest.