Enhancing Food Quality and Plant Stress Tolerance through Selenium Biofortification: Strategies, Progress, and Challenges

A special issue of Agronomy (ISSN 2073-4395). This special issue belongs to the section "Soil and Plant Nutrition".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2024 | Viewed by 848

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Guest Editor
Biological Research Institute, National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), University of Mar del Plata (UNMDP), Mar del Plata, Argentina
Interests: plant science; the biofortification of crops; plant proteases

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Micronutrients play a crucial role in sustaining human health, and despite their requirement in minimal quantities, deficiencies impact an estimated 3 billion individuals worldwide. Selenium is noteworthy in this context. The inadequate intake of dietary selenium affects up to 1 in 7 people’s health. Prediction models anticipate that those alterations produced by climate change, specifically in the soil's organic carbon content, can result in a general decline in soil selenium concentrations, especially in agricultural regions. The biofortification of plants with selenium has been studied using various techniques, including genetic biofortification and the application of selenium fertilizers. Additionally, selenium is a beneficial element for plants that promotes their development and improves their agronomic parameters under unfavorable growth conditions.

This research topic aims to enhance our understanding of plant selenium biofortification and decrease the incidence of selenium deficiency in plants.

Authors are invited to submit original research, reviews, methods, and perspectives/opinions/hypotheses on topics that include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • The assessment of nutritional and quality parameters in crops after Se biofortification;
  • Se biofortification effects in plant development;
  • Plant tolerance to abiotic and biotic stresses after Se biofortification;
  • Se biofortification strategies and techniques in plants.

Dr. María Gabriela Guevara
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • crops improvement
  • climate change
  • selenium
  • biofortification
  • foods
  • human health
  • plant abiotic stress
  • plant biotic stress

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

18 pages, 18479 KiB  
Article
Application of 2-Iminoselenazolidin-4-Ones (ISeA) for Beta vulgaris L. and Brassica rapa L. Plants Se-Biofortification
by Natalia A. Semenova, Elena A. Nikulina, Nina V. Tsirulnikova, Maria M. Godyaeva, Nadezhda I. Uyutova, Ilya V. Baimler, Aleksander V. Simakin, Eugenia V. Stepanova and Sergey V. Gudkov
Agronomy 2024, 14(7), 1407; https://doi.org/10.3390/agronomy14071407 - 28 Jun 2024
Viewed by 526
Abstract
Due to widespread selenium deficiency in food the aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a new Se(II)-containing organic chemical compound 2-iminoselenazolidin-4-ones (ISeA) in the form of a nanoscale associate (1–5 nm) solution for Swiss chard and komatsuna plants biofortification. [...] Read more.
Due to widespread selenium deficiency in food the aim of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a new Se(II)-containing organic chemical compound 2-iminoselenazolidin-4-ones (ISeA) in the form of a nanoscale associate (1–5 nm) solution for Swiss chard and komatsuna plants biofortification. Application of the chosen substance as a foliar treatment (2 mg·L−1) and as an additive to a hydroponic nutrient solution (10 mg·L−1) was performed. Both cultures had a high level of Se absorption, distribution and accumulation in leaves two or more times greater than in petioles. Se content in chard petioles (15 mg·L−1) when applying ISeA as a component of the nutrient solution exceeded the accumulation of Se during foliar treatment (9.6 mg·L−1) and the same trend in the komatsuna leaves was observed. When applying ISeA to the nutrient solution, an increase in komatsuna and chard biomass was seen at 36 and 68% and for leaf treatment by 21 and 45%, respectively. For komatsuna and chard an increase in the ratio of dry to fresh weight was also observed to be 27 and 26%, and for foliar treatment—0 and 16%, respectively. Treatments led to increase in chard plants height (7–17%), enlargement of leaves (19–42%), a rise in photosynthetic pigments (20–60%) and anthocyanin (2.9 and 2.2 times) concentration, and for komatsuna—the multiplication of leaves number (28%) and their surface area (27–29%) as well as a rise in the concentration of anthocyanin (1.0 and 1.6 times) with foliar treatment and nutrient solution enrichment. Full article
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