Fortifying nursery soil-less media with cyanobacteria for enhancing the growth of tomato

Abstract

Priming nursery media to develop robust nurseries is a major objective of horticulturists for improving yields and quality of produce, and use of cyanobacteria, with both plant growth promoting and biofertilizing properties, can be valuable for generating robust nurseries of tomato. The potential of cyanobacteria as supplements to different soilless media combinations involving perlite, cocopeat and vermiculite (P,C,V) in different combinations was evaluated in terms of their ability to enhance the growth of tomato, from seed to fruiting stage. Agriculturally beneficial cyanobacterial cultures - Anabaena laxa, Calothrix elenkinii, and biofilm- Anabaena torulosa-Trichoderma viride (An-Tr) were used to augment these media and evaluated in Pro-Trays, pot and polyhouse beds respectively. Significant differences were recorded in terms of plant and media parameters. A positive correlation (r = 0.55, 0.78) between PEP carboxylase and Carbonic anhydrase enzyme activities was observed in Pro-Tray and polyhouse experiments. The performance of C:V + C. elenkinii, P:C:V + An-Tr, PM (Potting mix; C:V:P, 3:1:1) + A. laxa in terms of leaf, soil and nutrient data suggested their superiority among all other treatments. An enhancement of 14.70% and 36.55% in fruit and flower count was observed in PM + A. laxa over control. Among all the media evaluated, PM was most responsive to augmentation using any of the cultures, highlighting it as an effective nursery medium. A. laxa proved most superior among the cultures evaluated. Future research is focused on the upscaling the use of A. laxa as a nursery medium supplement for enhancing growth and productivity of tomato.