Abstract
Drought accompanied with reduced precipitation is one of the key manacles to global agricultural throughput and is expected to escalate further hence posing major challenges to future food safety. For a sustainable agricultural environment, drought resistant plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) are new encouraging prospect, which are inexpensive and have no side effects, as those of synthetic fertilizers. In the present study, five strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa, the strain MK513745, strain MK513746, strain MK513747, strain MK513748, and strain MK513749 were used as drought tolerant PGPR with multiple traits of IAA production, N fixation, P solubilization, siderophore producing capabilities. The strain MK513745 and strain MK513749 produced higher quantities of indole acetic acid (116±0.13 and 108±0.26 μg ml-1). MK513749 yielded 12 different indole compounds in GCMS analysis. The strain MK513748 yielded maximum S.I. (3.33mm) for phosphate solubilizing test. Maximum nitrogen concentration was produced (0.18 μg ml-1) by strain MK513746. Percent siderophore units ranged from 2.65% to 2.83% as all five pseudomonas strains were siderophore positive. In all growth experiments of plant microbe interaction two varieties of Vigna radiata (AZRI-06, NM-11) plants inoculated with P. aeruginosa strains under drought stress responded significantly (P<0.05) better than control stressed plants. Maximum shoot length was enhanced up-to 125%, pod/plant 172%, number of grains 65%, 100 seed weight 95%, 100 seed straw weight 124% and total yield 293% were recorded in plants inoculated with drought stress tolerant PGPR in both varieties as compared to respective stressed control plants. Photosynthetic activity, membrane stability (45%), water content (68%) and antioxidant efficacy (19%) were improved with PGPR inoculations. The variety NM-11 (V2) was more tolerant to drought stress with inoculations of Pseudomonas strains than AZRI-06 (V1). Inoculations with these indole acetic acid producing strains would be suitable for plant growth promotion in areas facing water deficiency.
Highlights
Water stress is a serious problem in plant production as it imparts drastic consequences at all stages [1,2]
Five strains of rhizobacteria selected “S1 Fig”, were isolated from rhizospheres of four wild (Ziziphus jujube, Melia azedarach, Calotropis procera and Cnicus arvensis) and one from cultivated plant (Mangifera indica) from different cities of Punjab (Khanewal, Mian chanoo, Sheikhupura, Lahore) and were given the number M1, M4, M7, M11 and M15 (Later, given accession numbers MK513745, MK513746, MK513747, MK513748, MK513749 according to NCBI Genbank)
Soil pH ranged from 8 to 8.9 and E.C was between the range of 2.87 to 10.45 mS/cm
Summary
Water stress is a serious problem in plant production as it imparts drastic consequences at all stages [1,2]. Up to 45% of the world’s agricultural lands are subjected to continuous or frequent drought wherein 38% of the world human population resides [3]. This problem is since decades due to global warming, low rainfall, high temperature and reduced reservoir capacity. In Pakistan, nearly 15 million hectares of cultivated land are affected by aforementioned conditions resulting in reduced productivity and the situation can be alarming by the year 2025 [9,10]
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