Impact of Varying Dosages of Nano-Urea and Nano-DAP on Growth and Fertility of
Allium cepa
Arka Prava Mukherjee, Simran, Gaurav Pal, Ayushman Singh, Vijay Rani Rajpal*
Department of Botany, Hansraj College, University of Delhi
*Corresponding Author: vrrajpal@hrc.du.ac.in
Hunger is one of the most critical challenges that humanity faces today. Currently, over 300
million people are facing acute hunger, and nearly 2.3 billion lack access to adequate and
nutritious food. It has been projected that global food production must increase by 50% to 70%
by 2050, to feed the world’s population. To account for this increased productivity as well as
to mitigate various biotic and abiotic stresses posed by the changing environment, agricultural
systems heavily depend on the use of chemicals including fertilizers, pesticides, etc. Chemical
fertilizers pose detrimental effects on soil, air and water, resulting in environmental pollution
which gets compounded by the high dosages at which these are used to achieve the required
efficiency. As much as 60% of the applied nitrogen is lost to volatilization, leaching, and
runoff, leading to groundwater contamination, leaving a little fraction for absorption. To
overcome these challenges, Nano-fertilizers have recently emerged as a sustainable option for
enhancing agricultural productivity to ensure food security. Nano-fertilizers help achieve high
efficiency, absorption, and productivity at much lower concentrations as compared to
traditional fertilizers. The global nano-fertilizer market size is estimated to grow to 8.2 billion
by 2033. In India, IFFCO (Indian Farmers Fertilizers Cooperative Limited) has recently
launched various nano-fertilizers, such as nano-DAP and nano-urea, that have been
documented to show improved productivity in various crops. Nevertheless, their excess use has
been observed to pose several aneugenic and clastogenic effects on the crops, leading to various
chromosomal aberrations at the cellular level that are associated with reduction in fertility and
hence grain yield. Nanotoxicology is emerging as a novel domain of research after surfacing
of ill-effects of nanoparticles. The present study comprehensively analyzed the effect of various
dosages of nano-urea and nano-DAP on mitotic complements in Allium cepa, the common bulb
onion.
Keywords: Allium cepa, Mitosis, Nano-DAP, Nano-Urea, Seed-priming.