. 2026 Mar 12;16:8953. doi: 10.1038/s41598-026-40078-5

Table 1.

Effect of silica and silica nanoparticles priming at 30 and 100 ppm concentrations on rice seedlings’ germination criteria and water uptake. Data are presented as means ± SE. Significant differences in the mean value of each treatment are represented by different lowercase letter (s) based on Fisher`s test (p ≤ 0.05, n = 3). HP: hydro priming, Bulk-Si: silica, Bio-SiNPs: biologically synthesized silica nanoparticles, Chem-SiNPs: chemically synthesized silica nanoparticles.

Treatments	Germination percentage (GP) (%)	Germination rate (GR) (%)	Germination Index (GI)	Germination rate index (GRI)	Seedling vigour index (SVI)	Water uptake (WU) (%)
Treatments	Germination percentage (GP) (%)	Germination rate (GR) (%)	Germination Index (GI)	Germination rate index (GRI)	Seedling vigour index (SVI)	12 h	24 h
HP	73.33^ab±0.66	88.67^cd±0.67	55.04^c±0.19	110.09^c±0.38	10.44^e±0.34	25.31^c±0.26	28.39^bc±0.65
Bulk-Si₃₀	71.33^b±4.05	88.00^d±1.15	59.71^b±1.60	119.41^b±3.19	12.11^de±0.16	25.28^c±0.68	27.91^c±0.60
Bulk-Si₁₀₀	75.33^ab±0.66	90.00^cd±1.15	60.96^b±1.55	121.90^b±3.10	13.93^cd±0.72	26.85^bc±0.82	30.44^abc±0.18
Chem-SiNPs₃₀	74.66^ab±1.33	92.00^bc±1.15	61.76^ab±0.97	123.52^ab±1.94	13.72^cd±0.68	28.32^b±0.20	30.02^abc±0.57
Chem-SiNPs₁₀₀	76.00^ab±1.15	94.67^ab±0.67	63.19^ab±0.62	126.38^ab±1.23	15.72^bc±0.55	28.69^ab±0.16	31.17^ab±0.43
Bio-SiNPs₃₀	76.00^ab±1.15	94.67^ab±0.67	63.89^ab±0.84	127.78^ab±1.68	16.76^ab±0.44	28.37^b±0.80	31.52^ab±1.06
Bio-SiNPs₁₀₀	79.33^a±0.66	97.33^a±0.67	65.37^a±0.82	130.73^a±1.64	18.68^a±0.62	30.82^a±0.41	32.25^a±1.16
Significance at p ≤ 0.05	0.143	< 0.0001	0.0001	0.0001	< 0.0001	0.003	< 0.0001