Effect of antioxidant on pesticide induced cytomorphological consequences in hexaploid wheat (triticum aestivum l.)

Abstract

To meet up the growing demand of huge number of population, high production of crop plants playing a major role in ensuring food security and food availability. But different kind of pests and diseases is affecting the production of crop plants adversely. Now-a-days pesticides have got a remarkable popularity in terms of pest management, plant protection and to increase the yield of the crop plants. Thus, crop plants are being directly affected with different sorts of adverse consequences. Mutagenic and carcinogenic effect of pesticides is managed by the use of antioxidant as it is used in case of mammals. The present study was designed to investigate the protective role of antioxidants against pesticide toxicity in wheat seeds. Wheat seeds treated with pesticides were used as control in this experiment and then pre- and post-treatment were operated using antioxidants. The seeds of pre- and post- treatment were designated as M1 generation. Treated seeds were allowed to germinate in laboratory as well as in the field following three factors randomized complete block design and data were collected on cytological as well as growth and yield related characters. The M2 seeds collected from M1 plants (raised from the seeds treated previously) were left untreated and were sown in next year. Again data were collected on morphological and cytological characters from M2 generation to investigate the residual effect. Result obtained from M1 generation indicates that pesticides induced adverse morphological and cytological characters. At the same time pre- and post-treatment of antioxidants showed positive effect on reducing pesticide toxicity enhancing growth and yield related characters. The overall findings indicated that antioxidants have an antagonistic effect against pesticide induced cytomorphological consequences. Result, also revealed that pre-treatment showed more efficiency than that of post-treatment. Result of M2 generation showed that both pesticide and antioxidant had same sort of residual effect.