The Effects of Oxidative Stress on Plant Health in Relation to Free Radicals

Overview

Free radicals, or atoms with unpaired electrons, pose biological threats to all organisms. Oxidative stress, a result of an overabundance of free radicals, can lead to consequences such as DNA mutation and the acceleration of degenerative diseases. This project aimed to create an accessible detection technique for characterizing a plant’s health and identifying the potential for early diseases, which could ultimately aid in the maximization of agricultural yield. Mentha spicata (spearmint plants) were exposed to various concentrations of a reducing agent (ascorbic acid, C6H8O6) and an oxidizing agent (hydrogen peroxide, H2O2). Ascorbic acid, commonly associated with vitamin C, functioned as an antioxidant. Meanwhile, H2O2 was used as it is a byproduct of many organisms’ metabolic processes. After 24 hours of exposure, a spectrophotometer was used to determine the transmission rates of chlorophyll samples from each experimental group. Plants exposed to only distilled water were observed as the control group. It was concluded that an increase of an oxidative agent's concentration resulted in the chlorophyll samples’ higher transmission rates (the amount of incident light that passed through the samples). At 800 nm, the average transmission rate of the plants exposed to 5% H2O2 was at 2.12%, while that of the 15% H2O2 plant groups was 2.63%. The plants exposed to C6H8O6 produced the lowest transmission rates with an average of 1.1% at 800 nm. The plants given hydrogen peroxide followed a trend in which their transmission rates increased as the concentration of the hydrogen peroxide increased. This indicates that there was most likely a concurrent degradation of plant tissue that caused it to become more transparent and light-permeable. With further research and experimentation, this project seeks to create an even simpler procedure that would not only track free radicals, but limit their propagation. While this experiment focused on only one type of plant, future studies will include a greater variety of test subjects. By proving a correlation between the presence of oxidative stress and a plant’s transmission rates, these results lead to further discussions regarding a plant’s response to oxidizing/reducing agents and its health. Continued research would not only impact the advancement of early disease detection and management in plants, but also indicate how the health of plants translates to the status of the environment.

Competition history

• AJAS 2020 Category not listed

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