The potential use of and as biostimulants on maize plants.

Nitrogen deficiency and drought stress are among the major stresses faced by plants with negative consequence on crop production. The use of plant biostimulants is a very promising application in agriculture to improve crop yield, but especially to prevent the effect of abiotic stresses. Algae-derived biostimulants represent an efficient tool to stimulate the root development: while macroalgae have already been widely adopted as a source of biostimulants to improve plants growth and resilience, far less information is available for microalgae. The objective of this work is to investigate the stimulant ability on maize roots of two green algae species, and , being respectively the model organism for and one of the most promising species for microalgae cultivation at industrial scale. The results obtained demonstrate that both and cells promoted the development of maize root system compared to the untreated negative control. specifically increased the number of secondary roots, while improved micro-nutrients accumulation on roots and shoots was measured in the case of treated plants. When these microalgae-derived biostimulants were applied on plants grown in stress conditions as nitrogen deficiency, improved development of the root system was measured in the case of plants treated with biomass. Microalgae cultivation for biostimulant production can thus be considered as a bio-based process providing solutions for improving plant resilience toward stress conditions.