Impact of protein hydrolysate biostimulants on growth of barley and wheat and their interaction with symbionts and pathogens

Christoph Stephan Schmidt,Tomáš Frantík,Martin Bárnet,Miroslav Vosátka,Libor Mrnka,Eva Baldassarre Švecová

doi:10.23986/afsci.84790

Abstract

We compared the biostimulant effect of a novel chicken feather hydrolysate (FH) and a reference protein hydrolysate (RH) on barley and wheat in a pot experiment. Their interactions with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) and phosphorus (P) supply were also addressed. All experimental factors influenced barley growth. Shoot height and biomass of barley were increased by FH and reduced by RH. AMF decreased barley biomass at high P-supply. In wheat, the biomass was slightly reduced by AMF while other factors had no significant effect. In the parallel field experiment, RH but not FH increased yield and grain size of barley, while there was no significant effect of either hydrolysate on wheat. Application time had no effect on hydrolysate efficacy. Both hydrolysates promoted severity of net blotch (Pyrenophora teres maculata) on barley in the pot experiment, but reduced it in field. FH promoted wheat root colonisation by AMF under low-P supply. Our results show limited transferability of pot results to field conditions and manifest complex interactions between hydrolysates, soil phosphorus, and plant symbionts and pathogens.

Highlights

In a world of a growing human population and diminishing resources, there is an urgent need to secure high crop yields concomitantly with the reduction of the environmental impact of conventional modern agriculture
We addressed the following questions: a) Do both hydrolysates promote growth of barley and wheat? b) Is the novel chicken feather hydrolysate more effective compared to the reference hydrolysate? c) Is there any interaction of the hydrolysates with arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) inoculation and phosphorus supply? We hypothesised that the benefit of the AMF inoculum would be low at high P-level and high at low P-level and that there would be a synergy between hydrolysates and AMF especially at low P-supply
A novel feather protein hydrolysate (FH) was produced out of chicken feathers provided by the company Rabbit Trhový Štěpánov a.s. through CO2-assisted pressure hydrolysis conducted in the Institute of the Chemical Processes Fundamentals of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic according to Hanika et al (2015)

Summary

Introduction

In a world of a growing human population and diminishing resources, there is an urgent need to secure high crop yields concomitantly with the reduction of the environmental impact of conventional modern agriculture. Biostimulants are defined as products stimulating plant nutrition processes independently of the product’s nutrient content, with the sole aim of improving one or more of the following characteristics of the plant or the plant rhizosphere: nutrient use efficiency, tolerance to abiotic stress, quality traits, and availability of confined nutrients in the soil or rhizosphere (EU 2019). They are used in low quantities (Ertani et al 2014) and pre-dominantly generated from waste materials (Halpern et al 2015) being resourceefficient and fulfilling the demand of a circular economy. The biostimulating potential of chicken feather hydrolysates was apparent in a multitude of crops; their foliar application increased maize yield, nutrition and grain parameters (Tejada et al 2018) and improved growth of wheat seedlings (Genç and Atici 2019) and lettuce (Sobucki et al 2019)

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