Abstract
A major challenge for agriculture is to provide sufficient plant nutrients such as phosphorus (P) to meet the global food demand. The sufficiency of P is a concern because of it’s essential role in plant growth, the finite availability of P-rock for fertilizer production and the poor plant availability of soil P. This study investigated whether biofertilizers and bioenhancers, such as arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and their associated bacteria could enhance growth and P uptake in maize. Plants were grown with or without mycorrhizas in compartmented pots with radioactive P tracers and were inoculated with each of 10 selected bacteria isolated from AMF spores. Root colonization by AMF produced large plant growth responses, while seven bacterial strains further facilitated root growth and P uptake by promoting the development of AMF extraradical mycelium. Among the tested strains, Streptomyces sp. W94 produced the largest increases in uptake and translocation of 33P, while Streptomyces sp. W77 highly enhanced hyphal length specific uptake of 33P. The positive relationship between AMF-mediated P absorption and shoot P content was significantly influenced by the bacteria inoculants and such results emphasize the potential importance of managing both AMF and their microbiota for improving P acquisition by crops.
Highlights
In the decades, a major challenge for agriculture will be the sustainable production of enough food crops to meet the growing global demand
This work, for the first time, investigated to which degree growth and P uptake of mycorrhizal and non-mycorrhizal maize plants would benefit from inoculation with a selection of bacterial strains isolated from arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) spores, showing multiple plant growth promoting (PGP) activities in vitro
We report data on total and colonized root length of maize plants grown in the root hyphal compartment (RHC) and on hyphal length occurring in the hyphal compartment (HC), obtained from two successive experiments where the PGP bacterial strains (3 strains in Exp. 1, 8 strains in Exp. 2) were inoculated alone and in combination with the Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungus R. irregularis
Summary
A major challenge for agriculture will be the sustainable production of enough food crops to meet the growing global demand. Arbuscular mycorrhizal (AM) fungi (AMF, Glomeromycota) are important beneficial soil microorganisms establishing mutualistic associations with most food crops These associations increase plant nutrient uptake and tolerance to root pathogens and drought. The development and performance of AMF may be mediated by a third component of the symbiosis, represented by highly diverse bacterial communities living associated with AMF spores and mycelium (mycorrhizospheric microbiota)[32,33,34,35,36] Such beneficial bacteria showed key plant growth promoting (PGP) functions, encompassing nitrogen fixation, P solubilization, the production of indole acetic acid (IAA), siderophores and antibiotics, supplying fundamental nutrients and growth factors[37,38,39,40,41,42]. While AM colonization resulted in large plant growth responses, the bacteria inoculants increased the abundance of AMF hyphae in soil and four of them root P content and dry weight
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