Fungicides are either chemicals or biological agents that inhibit the growth of fungi or fungal spores and are helpful in increasing the crop productivity. Besides beneficial effect of application of fungicides, reports have suggested that varied concentrations of fungicides interfere with the basic metabolism, and induce the formation of various biomolecules and also alter the physiological
... [Show full abstract] parameters of plant growth. The present study is an attempt to understand the effect of different concentrations of carbendazim on various physiological, biochemical and antioxidative enzymes in developing seedlings of chickpea. Seeds were treated with different concentrations (0.02-0.10%) of the fungicide for 6 hours and then allowed to germinate for 7 days in an incubated chamber. It was observed that there was a consistant decrease in root/shoot length and the decrease was more prominant in shoots as compared to roots. Increased concentration of the fungicide resulted in changes in lipid peroxidation, protein content, proline content, thus indicating that fungicide adversely affects various growth and physiological parameters at higher concentrations. Biochemical experiments indicated that higher concentrations of the fungicide also affected the total sugar as well as amalyase content at the 7-day-old seedling stage, thereby giving an indication that the fungicide interferes with carbohydrate metabolism. We observed that the level of catalase and peroxidase decreased at higher concentrations of the fungicide as compared to control samples whereas an increase in the concentration of SOD enzyme was obtained, thus suggesting that plant induces various antioxidative enzymes as protective defense mechanism against fungicide stress. INTRODUCTION Fungicides are either chemicals or biological agents that inhibit the growth of fungi or fungal spores. Fungi can also cause serious a damage in agriculture, resulting in critical losses of yield, quality and profit. Application of fungicides may affect crop physiology by various disruptions such as growth reduction, perturbation in the development of reproductive organs, alteration of nitrogen or carbon metabolism leading to a lower nutrient availability for plant growth. Carbendazim is a broad spectrum systemic fungicide belonging to which belongs to benzimidazole chemical group and Mancozeb is a contact fungicide of chemical group dithiocarbamate that react with the protein SH groups. It has been reported that these fungicides affects the growth and plant shoot length and antioxidant enzyme assay (Dias, 2012; Gracia et al. 2003).