Abstract:
Plant tissue culture technique could provide steril
e and controllable condition in order
to assay direct effect of different compounds on pl
ant growth accurately. In this study, the
effects of aqueous extracts prepared from roots and
shoots of goosefoot (
Chenopodium
album
L
.
), redroot pigweed (
Amaranthus retroflexus
L.), fennel (
Foeniculum vulgare
), and
wormwood (
Artemisia absinthium
L
.
) were evaluated on the seed germination and growth
criteria in tissue culture media. The fennel root e
xtract, nearly without phenolic content
and with low antioxidant activity, showed the most
drastic allelopathic effect on goosefoot,
especially at 100 mg mL
-1
concentration, which might be due to the presence
of some
substance potentially useful for biological control
of goosefoot, an invasive weed.
Goosefoot was resistant to extract of fennel shoot,
wormwood root, and shoot, while
fennel and radish (
Raphanus sativus
L.), at high concentration (100 mg mL
-1
), were not
resistant to the root and shoot extracts of both go
osefoot and redroot pigweed. In response
to allelopathic components, shoot:root ratio was in
creased, and more peroxidase and
superoxide dismutase activity were detected in root
s. There was no direct relationship
between allelopathic effects with total phenolic co
ntent and antioxidant activity. In
conclusion, our results showed that allelopathic ef
fects of extracts on growth and
biochemical criteria depended on both the concentra
tion levels and the plant parts from
which the aqueous extract was derived. Therefore, t
issue culture media is an accurate and
suitable tool to screen plants resistant to allelop
athic components of weeds, and to identify
high allelopathic plants as potential bioherbicide
and invasive plant controller.
Keywords
: Aqueous extract, Growth criteria, Invasive plant,
Total phenolic content, Antioxidant
activity.
