Abstract
An assessment of roles of rhizospheric microbial diversity in plant growth is helpful in understanding plant-microbe interactions. Using random combinations of rhizospheric bacterial species at different richness levels, we analysed the contribution of species richness, compositions, interactions and identity on soil microbial respiration and plant biomass. We showed that bacterial inoculation in plant rhizosphere enhanced microbial respiration and plant biomass with complementary relationships among bacterial species. Plant growth was found to increase linearly with inoculation of rhizospheric bacterial communities with increasing levels of species or plant growth promoting trait diversity. However, inoculation of diverse bacterial communities having single plant growth promoting trait, i.e., nitrogen fixation could not enhance plant growth over inoculation of single bacteria. Our results indicate that bacterial diversity in rhizosphere affect ecosystem functioning through complementary relationship among plant growth promoting traits and may play significant roles in delivering microbial services to plants.
Highlights
Bacillus cereus Brevibacillus agri Bacillus subtilis Pseudomonas putida Bacillus megaterium Enterobacter sp
We found that functionally diverse rhizospheric bacterial communities enhance plant productivity while functionally redundant nitrogen fixing community did not; the plant biomass could not increase over monocultures
Linear increase in ecosystem functioning and presence of transgressive overyielding in several combinations indicate that bacterial functional traits may work in a complementary way and enhance plant biomass
Summary
Bacillus cereus Brevibacillus agri Bacillus subtilis Pseudomonas putida Bacillus megaterium Enterobacter sp. Biodiversity can increase ecosystem functioning through niche partitioning, habitat modification and direct facilitation to other organisms. Nitrogen fixers may provide extra nitrogen to other microbes, increasing their population, which, in turn, may facilitate nitrogen fixation through increasing availability of other essential nutrients like phosphorus. We study the functioning of microbial diversity in the rhizosphere and its role in plant growth. Bacterial strains were isolated from rhizospheric soil of Ocimum sanctum L. (Lamiaceae) on the basis of their common occurrence in the plant rhizosphere and their fast growing capability on nutrient agar medium. We hypothesized that the diversity in plant growth promoting traits in a bacterial community will be beneficial to plant growth, and functionally diverse bacterial community will promote more plant growth than simplified community
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