Table 7.
List of TiO2-NPs- and ZnO-NPs-treated sunflower plant quantitative, nutritional and physiological parameters, and those for the control. Plants were harvested after 125 days. Results show standard deviation and Fisher’s least significant difference.
| TiO2-NPs Foliar Applied Variant | ZnO-NPs Foliar Applied Variant | Control Variant (No NPs Application) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quantitative parameters | |||
| Number of plants per hectare | 77442 ± 237 ns | 77548 ± 366 ns | 77658 ± 66 |
| Number of head per hectare | 77851 ± 341 ns | 77687 ± 423 ns | 78007 ± 117 |
| Head diameter (mm) | 314 ± 9 ** | 276 ± 9 ** | 265 ± 9 * |
| Weigh of dry seed head (g) | 231.01 ± 13.73 ** | 191.1 ± 20.9 ** | 160.2 ± 19.0 |
| Weight of thousand seeds (TSW) (g) | 76.11 ± 7.38 * | 66.6 ± 1.7 * | 53.2 ± 10.9 |
| Grain yield (t·ha−1) | 4.50 ± 0.28 ** | 3.4 ± 0.5 ** | 2.5 ± 0.3 |
| Nutritional parameter | |||
| Content of oil (%) | 63.64 ± 1.59 * | 60.5 ± 1.1 * | 59.2 ± 1.0 |
| Physiological parameters | |||
| NDVI 1 | 0.043 ± 0.004 ns | 0.047 ± 0.005 ns | 0.041 ± 0.005 |
| PRI 2 | −0.021 ± 0.002 ** | −0.017 ± 0.001 ** | −0.022 ± 0.003 |
| CWSI 3 | 0.57 ± 0.04 ns | 0.52 ± 0.10 ns | 0.53 ± 0.06 |
1 Normalised difference vegetation index (NDVI), 2 Photochemical reflectance index (PRI), 3 Crop water stress index (CWSI), the significance: * P value < 0.05, ** P value < 0.01, ns Non-significant.