Effect of Bread Wheat Grain Soaking in Different Titanium Dioxide Concentrations on the Yield and its Components

Titanium (Ti) is a very interesting chemical element, so it shows beneficial effects on various physiological parameters of plants at low concentrations. This study was conducted at Agronomy Department Experimental Farm, Agriculture Faculty, Assiut University during 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 seasons to study the effect of bread wheat grains soaking in different titanium dioxide concentrations on the yield and its components. The experiment was layout in randomize complete blocks design (RCBD) using split-plot arrangement with three replicates. Soaking times (12, 18 and 24 hour) were arranged in main plots, while the titanium dioxide nanoparticles concentrations (0.00, 0.01, 0.02 and 0.03%) were arranged in sub- plots. The obtained results showed that all studied traits except spike number/ m² in both seasons and kernel weight spike^-1 in the first season only didn’t affected significantly by soaking times. Here too, all studied traits reacted significantly to titanium dioxide nanoparticles concentrations as compared to control (without titanium dioxide nanoparticles). In addition, titanium dioxide nanoparticles at 0.02% or 0.03% increased almost studied traits. Thus, wheat grains soaked before sowing at 0.03% titanium dioxide nanoparticles concentration for 24 hour produced the highest mean value of grain yield (25.0ardab fad^-1) in the first season, while  in the second season the superiority observed when wheat grains soaked  at 0.01% titanium dioxide nanoparticles concentration for 18 hour (23.5 ardab fad^-1) with no significant difference between this treatment and grain soaked at 0.02% titanium dioxide nanoparticles concentration for 12 hour which yielded 23.2 ardab fad^-1.