Chromatographic Analysis of Opium (Papaver somniferium) Cultured on ZnO NPs Stress

Abstract

Nanotechnology, the emergmg discipline of conjugative SClence, has tremendous applications in medical, agriculture, environmental and many other fields. However, beside the beneficial effects, there are many concerns regarding use of nanomaterials. The most common alert is toxicity especially regarding metallic nanopaIticles as their release in water, soil and air may affect all life from microbial to plant and animals. To disclose negative effect of nanopaIticles on plant growth, the work was cani.ed on ZnO nanoparticles and Papaver somniferum. Initially seed gelmination efficiency was analysed followed by plant physiological characteli.stics. Furthermore, to analyse toxic effect of NPs on plant metabolic pathways, different phytochemical analysis were perfonned. The results show that low to moderate concentration of ZnO NPs has nonsignificant effect on seed gennination however, on plant architecture, length and weight parameters, significant difference is observed though the difference was concentration dependent. The results also reveal that NPs presence caused oxidative stress on plants therefore increased level of total antioxidative activity, total reducing power potential and DPPH based free radical scavenging activity were observed elevated with increase of ZnO concentration in the media. It was further observed that to combat oxidative stress, non-enzymatic antioxidants, phenolics and flavonoids concentrations increase in stressed plants. HPLC analyses on plants extracts shows that gallic acid and caffeic acid concentrations increased in the P. somniferum plants presuming that these phenolic molecules play major role to minimize oxidative stress caused by the nanopaIticles