Enhancement of Manihot esculenta Crantz (Cassava) Tolerance to Salt and Drought Stress Using Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (Glomus Mosseae (T. H. Nicosia & Gerd) Gerd. &Trappe)

Abstract

Drought and salinity are environmental factors capable of adversely affecting plant growth and productivity. Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi (AMF) has been utilised in ameliorating several environmental conditions capable of limiting plants productivity. This study assessed the enhancement of cassava tolerance to both salinity and drought using AMF. A factorial experiment was conducted at the screen house of the Department of Botany University of Ibadan where three levels of salinity (0 mM, 80 mM and 100 mM, and four levels of water regime (1 daily, 2/wk, 1/wk, and 1 (2wks) and 50 grams of crude inoculum of AMF and 0g as control were applied to the cassava plant to monitor its morphological and agronomic responses for the period of three months. The results from the morphological and agronomic data showed that at higher levels of salinity, the interactive effect of salinity and drought was significant (at p<0.001) on growth parameters such as plant height, the total number of leaves and number of leaves produced per week. The shoot and root dry and fresh weights of cassava, as well as tuber initiation, was also affected at high drought and salinity. The effect of AMF (at p<0.05) significantly improved plant height, total number of leaves and shoot dry weight while parameters such as leaf area, the total number of leaves, number of leaves produced, number of leaves dropped, and tuber initiated were insignificantly improved.