Abstract
<p>Haricot bean (<em>Phaseolus vulgaris</em> L.) is one of the most important cash crops and export commodities besides its use in human food and soil fertility improvement. Phosphorus (P) is one of the major bio-elements that limits agricultural production. However, phosphate-solubilizing fungi play a noteworthy role in increasing the bioavailability of soil phosphates for plants. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects phosphate solubilizing fungi on the growth of haricot bean plants. Cultural and morphological features were used to tentatively identify the fungal isolates to genus level. Based <em>In vitro</em> phosphate solubilization efficieny conducted in both solid and liquid PVK medium following standard procedures, two best isolates were selected and evaluated under greenhouse for their performance on haricot bean. Under greenhouse experiment, shoot height (47.31 cm plant<sup>-1</sup>), root length (41.01 cm plant<sup>-1</sup>), nodule number (65.67 plant<sup>-1</sup>), nodule dry weight (0.59 g plant<sup>-1</sup>), shoot fresh weight (62.73 g plant<sup>-1</sup>), shoot dry weight (14.33 g plant<sup>-1</sup>), number of pod (12.89 plant<sup>-1</sup>), 50-seed weight (35.89 g plant<sup>-1</sup>), P content (0.59%) and N content (1.96%) were significantly increased by co-inoculation of two isolates (PSFAP) in the soil amended with rock phosphate (RP) compared to control. Moreover, the highest number of leaves (59.55 leaves plant<sup>-1</sup>) and root fresh weight (14.19 g plant<sup>-1</sup>) were recorded as a result of inoculation with isolate PSFP compared to control. The present study indicated the presence of potential plant associated fungi that possess phytobeneficial traits for extending their use as microbial biofertilizers after testing their suitability for the desired purpose.</p>
Highlights
Haricot bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is the most important pulse crop predominantly grown in the central rift valley for cash crop and export commodity to generate foreign exchange in Ethiopia (Ferris & Kaganzi, 2008)
Nine fungal isolates that showed larger Solubilization index (SI) and were preliminarily selected as better phosphate solubilizers to evaluate their efficiency on PKV broth using TCP and rock phosphate (RP) as inorganic phosphate sources
All the selected isolates were capable of mobilizing TCP and RP in Pikovskaya’s agar medium (PVK) broth
Summary
Haricot bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is the most important pulse crop predominantly grown in the central rift valley for cash crop and export commodity to generate foreign exchange in Ethiopia (Ferris & Kaganzi, 2008). The crop plays an important role in improving the soil fertility by fixing atmospheric nitrogen with the association of Rhizobium species present in the root nodules (Thalooth et al, 2006). Chemical fertilizers are being added to the soil to increase the availability of phosphorus for plants, a large portion of which is rapidly immobilized and becomes unavailable to plants and can lead to an overall reduction in soil fertility after application (Das et al, 2003). This leads to frequent application of chemical phosphatic fertilizers. The necessity to develop economical and eco-friendly fertilizers is steadily increasing (Reddy et al, 2002; Chuang et al, 2007)
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