Jiménez-Arias David, Morales-Sierra Sarai, García-García Ana L, Herrera Antonio J, Pérez Schmeller Rayco, Suárez Emma, Santana-Mayor Álvaro, Silva Patrícia, Borges João Paulo, Pinheiro de Carvalho Miguel  A
Departamento de Producción Vegetal en Zonas Tropicales y Subtropicales, Instituto Canario de Investigaciones Agrarias, Finca "Isamar", Ctra. de El Boquerón s/n, Valle Guerra, 38270 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
Agroquímica, ICIA, Unit Associated with CSIC by IPNA and EEZ, Ctra. de El Boquerón s/n, Valle Guerra, 38270 La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain.
Polymers (Basel). 2025 Jun 10;17(12):1617. doi: 10.3390/polym17121617.
Climate change is reducing agricultural productivity through altered weather patterns and extreme events, potentially decreasing yields by 10-25%. Biostimulants like pyroglutamic acid can enhance plant tolerance to water stress, but their rapid degradation in the soil limits effectiveness. Encapsulation in alginate matrices promises to be a good solution, protecting the compound and enabling controlled release. This study reports, for the first time, that encapsulated pyroglutamic acid markedly enhances drought tolerance in tomato and maize plants. The encapsulation strategy reduces effective concentration by an order of magnitude while significantly improving water use efficiency, photo-synthetic performance, and overall stress resilience. These findings demonstrate that alginate-based encapsulation substantially increases biostimulant uptake and efficacy, providing a novel and efficient strategy to mitigate water stress in crops, with important implications for climate-resilient agriculture. Two encapsulation methods for generating the alginate microcapsules are compared: ionic gelation with Nisco system and the electrospray technique.
气候变化正通过改变天气模式和极端事件降低农业生产力，产量可能会减少10%-25%。像焦谷氨酸这样的生物刺激剂可以增强植物对水分胁迫的耐受性，但其在土壤中的快速降解限制了有效性。用海藻酸盐基质进行包封有望成为一种很好的解决方案，既能保护化合物又能实现控释。本研究首次报道，包封的焦谷氨酸显著增强了番茄和玉米植株的耐旱性。包封策略将有效浓度降低了一个数量级，同时显著提高了水分利用效率、光合性能和整体抗逆能力。这些发现表明，基于海藻酸盐的包封大大提高了生物刺激剂的吸收和功效，为减轻作物水分胁迫提供了一种新颖且有效的策略，对气候适应型农业具有重要意义。比较了两种制备海藻酸盐微胶囊的包封方法：用Nisco系统进行离子凝胶化和电喷雾技术。
