Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria improved growth, yield and yield components of Lentil (Lens culinaris Medic) under shading growing conditions

Abstract

A farm experiment was conducted to observe the effects of Azosspirillum strain Brasilience inoculation and artificial shading on the yield and yield components of lentil. The seeds of lentil were incubated in flasks by shaking at 80 rpm for 2 h at 28 °C to coat the seeds with the rhizobacteria. In this experiment two factors including five shading levels (control (no shading), 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% shading) and bio-priming with plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (seed inoculation with Azospirillum and control) arranged in a factorial experiment based on randomized complete block design with three replications. Shading had significant effect on all traits including number of filled pod, grain number per plant, 100 grain weight, harvest index (HI), biomass yield and grain yield. Also, bio-priming had significant effect on all mentioned traits except harvest index and their interaction were significant (P< 0.01) on all traits except 100 grain weight. The results showed that the highest grain yield (2612.4 kg per ha.), HI (33.9), grain number per plant (43.67), number of filled pod (35.5), resulted from no shading (control) and bio-priming (seed inoculation with Azosspirillum). The lowest amounts of mentioned traits resulted from 100% shading and without bacterial application. Although, Maximum biomass yield achieved from 100 shading and bacterial application. The results of this study suggest that seed inoculation with Azosspirillum have the potential to increase the growth and yield of lentil plant under shading growing conditions.