METHODS article
Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Functional Plant Ecology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1507804
This article is part of the Research TopicIntegrating Nature-based Solutions for Land Degradation Neutrality and Deriving Co-BenefitsView all 8 articles
Effectiveness of growth promoters for the seagrass (Cymodocea nodosa) restoration
Provisionally accepted
- 1Marche Polytechnic University, Ancona, Marche, Italy
- 2National Biodiversity Future Centre, Italy, Palermo, Italy
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Seagrass meadows are regressing due to the cumulative impacts that affect coastal ecosystems worldwide. Seagrass restoration has been repeatedly proposed to reverse this trend, although with contrasting results due to the difficulty in maintaining the transplanted rhizomes. Enhancing the vegetative propagation of the rhizome plantings (e.g., employing growth-promoters) could represent a reliable tool to increase the success of seagrass restoration. Here we tested the effects of physioactivators, as plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB), and synthetic hormones, as plant growth regulators (PGRs), on a seagrass species to assess their potential utilization to enhance restoration efficiency. We conducted two separate experiments in aquaria on Cymodocea nodosa fragments: in the first one, the fragments were exposed to PGRs for six weeks, while in the second experiment, the fragments were exposed to PGPB for four weeks. For each experiment (PGRs and PGPB), the formation of new roots and new leaves, the survivorship, and the trend of maximum leaf length were compared between the treated and control (not exposed to PGRs or PGPB) fragments. It was observed that only the PGPB had a significant effect on the fragments' survivorship (90% in treated fragments vs. 25% in control ones) and contributed significantly to the formation of new leaves and roots of C. nodosa fragments. On the contrary, in the experiments with PGRs, no significant effects were observed between treated and control fragments, and both showed a survivorship of 100% at the end of the experiment. Our study showed that the application of growth-promoters (particularly PGPB) on fragments could increase their survival and the formation of new roots and leaves. Therefore, the use of PGPB on C. nodosa fragments can allow their re-employment in restoration interventions, without damaging the individuals of natural populations.
Keywords: Habitat-Forming Species, seagrass, Mediterranean Sea, complementary actions, Active restoration
Received: 08 Oct 2024; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Marletta, Sacco, Danovaro and Bianchelli. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Silvia Bianchelli, Marche Polytechnic University, Ancona, 60121, Marche, Italy
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