Performance of Centrocema grown on mercury-contaminated tailing inoculated with beneficial bacteria: Preliminary study

Abstract

Low levels of major essential nutrients and high mercury (Hg) content in gold mine tailings can inhibit plant growth. An inexpensive and effective strategy to overcome these obstacles was inoculation of plant-growth promoting bacteria and planting legume cover crops (LCC). A greenhouse experiment was conducted to evaluate the effect of isolates of Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria (NFB) and Phosphate Solubilizing Bacteria (PSB) on some growth characteristics of LCC Censtrosema pubescens (butterfly pea) grown in Hg-contaminated tailing of gold mine tailing. Moreover, the research was aimed to verify the viability of two bacterial groups in tailing after inoculation. The experiment was set up in randomized block design to test single and mixed inoculation of NFB and PSB. The experiment verified that the single inoculation and mixture of two bacteria did not change plant properties compared to the control treatment. Although the statistical analysis was not significant, there were slightly increase in root length as well as NFB and PSB populations of inoculated plants.