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Different physiological responses of C3 and C4 plants to nanomaterials

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Abstract

Several studies have previously reported that nanomaterial uptake and toxicity in plants are species dependent. However, the differences between photosynthetic pathways, C3 and C4, following nanomaterial exposure are poorly understood. In the current work, wheat and rice, two C3 pathway species are compared to amaranth and maize, which utilize the C4 photosynthetic mechanism. These plants were cultured in soils which were spiked with CuO, Ag, TiO2, MWCNT, and FLG nanomaterials. Overall, the C4 plant exhibited higher resilience to NM stress than C3 plants. In particular, significant differences were observed in chlorophyll contents with rice returning a 40.9–54.2% decrease compared to 3.5–15.1% for maize. Fv/Fm levels were significantly reduced by up to 51% in rice whereas no significant reductions were observed in amaranth and maize. Furthermore, NM uptake in the C3 species was greater than that in C4 plants, a trend that was also seen in metal concentration. TEM results showed that CuO NPs altered the chloroplast thylakoid structure in rice leaves and a large number of CuO NPs were observed in the vascular sheath cells. In contrast, there were no significant changes in the chloroplasts in the vascular sheath and no significant CuO NPs were found in maize leaves. This study was the first to systematically characterize the effect of metal and carbon-based nanomaterials in soil on C3 and C4 plants, providing a new perspective for understanding the impact of nanomaterials on plants.

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Data availability

Data, associated metadata, and calculation tools are avail-able from the corresponding author Yukui Rui (ruiyukui@163.com).

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Funding

This work was supported by National Key R&D Program of China (2017YFD0801103, 2017YFD0801300), NSFC-Guangdong Joint Fund U1401234, National Natural Science Foundation of China 41371471, National Natural Science Foundation of China 41130526, National innovation and entrepreneurship program for undergraduate (202010019081), and Undergraduate Research Program supported by Yantai Institute of China agricultural university (U20191001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100193, China

    Tonghao Bai, Muhammad Adeel, Mingshu Li, Kerui Guo, Yi Hao & Yukui Rui

  2. Yantai Institute, China Agricultural University, Yantai, 264670, Shandong, China

    Tonghao Bai, Mei Zhang, Ruize Gao & Jianwei Li

  3. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

    Peng Zhang, Zhiling Guo & Andrew J. Chetwynd

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  1. Tonghao Bai
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  2. Peng Zhang
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  3. Zhiling Guo
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  5. Mei Zhang
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  6. Muhammad Adeel
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  12. Yukui Rui
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Contributions

Tonghao Bai designed the experiments, analyzed the data, and drafted the paper. Peng Zhang analyzed the data and revised the paper. Zhiling Guo, Andrew J. Chetwynd, Mei Zhang, and Yukui Rui reviewed and edited manuscript. Muhammad Adeel, Mingshu Li, Ruize Gao, and Jianwei Li helped to perform the experiments. Kerui Guo and Yi Hao helped to get TEM images of nanoparticles. All authors have given approval to the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Peng Zhang or Yukui Rui.

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Bai, T., Zhang, P., Guo, Z. et al. Different physiological responses of C3 and C4 plants to nanomaterials. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 25542–25551 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-12507-7

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