Psyhcrotolerant Bio-inoculants and Their Co-inoculation to Improve Cicer arietinum Growth and Soil Nutrient Status for Sustainable Mountain Agriculture

Abstract

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is the most important pulse crop across the Himalayan regions, characterized with extreme as well as nutritionally deficient habitats. Considering the adverse effects of chemical fertilizers, bio-inoculants should be encouraged as natural Bnutrient^resource. Two indigenous bio-inoculants i.e. psychrotolerant diazotroph Pseudomonas palleroniana strain N26 and phosphate solubilizer Pseudomonas jesenii strain MP1 were evaluated for their plant growth promoting potential against chickpea in organic and conventionally managed soils under natural net house conditions. Furthermore, denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) and real-time PCR (qPCR) techniques were used to analyse the microbial diversity and dynamics during the experiment. Comparative agronomical and biochemical crop parameters revealed that organic soils co-inoculated with bioinoculants have 24.69%, 37.42%, 100.65%, 83.33%, 60.86% and 103.05% improvement in plant shoot length, root length, dry weight, fresh weight, chlorophyll content and nitrate reductase activity, respectively, over the control. Similarly, organic carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium content of co-inoculated soils was at par with their respective controls. Moreover, qPCR and DGGE-based soil bacterial dynamics unveiled the persistence of both the strains until the end of crop maturity without affecting the native micro-flora. Conclusively, bio-inoculants alone were found sufficient to fulfil crop nutritional requirement. Moreover, their co-inoculation showed significant potential for chickpea growth and development under organically managed soils, and therefore, additional incentive in their bio-formulation will be a step forward towards zero budget mountain farming.

Symbiotic Parameters, Productivity and Profitability in Kabuli Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) as Influenced by Application of Phosphorus and Biofertilizers

“…With microbial inoculations, improvement in the number of branches plant −1 might be related to production of phytohormones (Tagore et al 2013) which cause changes in root morphology and physiology, resulting in increased nutrient uptake from soil. Studies show that PGPR increase the growth of sorghum (Abbaszad eh-Da haji et al 2020 ), and Pseudomonas palleroniana and Pseudomonas jesenii improve the growth of chickpea (Rawat et al 2019).…”

Understanding the Impacts of Sowing Time and Tillage in Optimizing the Micro-Environment for Rainfed Lentil (Lens culinaris Medik) Production in the Lower Indo-Gangetic Plain

“…Addition of excess organic matter in soil through rice root biomass intensifies the carbohydrate content that acts as an important energy source for soil microbiomes (Mina et al 2008;Zuber and Villamil 2016;Bhaduri et al 2017;Moharana et al 2020). Subsequently, a larger microbial biomass might have formed and their activity catalysed decomposition of residues and corresponding release of essential nutrients for further microbial growth and activity (Srinivasarao et al 2018;Roy et al 2019;Rawat et al 2019). Our findings of higher DHA were in agreement with the research outcomes reported by Franco-Andreu et al (2017) and the impact of soil moisture stress was more prominent on the DHA than the SMBC (Table 2)…”

“…India shares~6% of global lentil production (FAO 2016) with an average yield of 758 kg ha −1 (DACFW 2014), and it is generally cultivated as rainfed crop in the post-harvest rice fallows in lower Indo-Gangetic plains. However, cultivation of lentil in rice fallows has far more potential to enhance farmers' net return under 'rainfed relay cropping' (Das et al 2014), as literature reported 11 Mha rice fallow remains uncultivated every year across India (Rao et al 2011). In addition, lentils also add a significant amount of atmospheric nitrogen (N) in the soil through rhizobial symbiosis, improving soil health and fertility (Matus et al 1997;Abi-Ghanem et al 2011;Amirnia et al 2019).…”

“…Water is essential for every living organism to maintain optimum biological activities, whereas soil moisture is essential for seed germination and subsequent crop growth and development (Rawat et al 2019). Moisture stress reduces the leaf area and chlorophyll content, aggravates leaf senescence, and retards overall plant biomass (Kusvuran 2012;Sharifi and Mohammadkhani 2016).…”

Fungi in Remediation of Hazardous Wastes: Current Status and Future Outlook

“…laccases, peroxidases, and cytochrome P450 monooxygenases (Tomer et al 2016;Rawat et al 2019;Kour et al 2019b;Mondal et al 2020;Rai et al 2020). The metal-microbe interactions are also affected by mechanisms like biotransformation, bioaccumulation, biomineralization, metal chelation, acidification, chemisorption, bioleaching, and bioseparation, thus affecting phytoremediation (Subrahmanyam et al 2020).…”