Abstract
The need to supply food for a growing world population, while protecting the environment by using sustainable agriculture, presents a major challenge, in terms of decreasing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The application of Pseudozyma aphidis cells onto crop plants considerably reduced infection by several pathogens, as well as significantly enhancing plant growth and yield. It was demonstrated in the current work that P. aphidis can enhance cucumber and tomato growth, both in vitro and in the greenhouse. P. aphidis was active when applied either via spray treatment or by seed coating. A significant promotion effect of P. aphidis on tomato and cucumber growth, flowering, and tomato yield and ripening, as compared to control plants, was demonstrated. Specifically, a 10–30% increase in tomato and cucumber plant height and leaf number, a 45% increase in average fruit weight, a 120% increase in tomato fruit ripening, and a flowering time advanced by two weeks were demonstrated. In conclusion, P. aphidis can significantly enhance the growth and yield of crop plants and can, thus, be used as bio-fertilizer.
Highlights
The need to supply food for a growing world population, while protecting the environment by using sustainable agriculture, presents a great challenge, in terms of decreasing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides
Pseudozyma aphidis was tested for its ability to stimulate the growth of cucumber seedlings
Significant differences were detected in terms of plant height (Figure 1a), absolute number of flowers (Figure 1b), and number of blooming flowers (Figure 1c), as well as the number of leaves (Figure 1d) on cucumber plants spray-treated with P. aphidis, as compared with distilled water-sprayed plants
Summary
The need to supply food for a growing world population, while protecting the environment by using sustainable agriculture, presents a great challenge, in terms of decreasing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Fungal biocontrol agents correspond to a BMO group that controls plant pathogens but were reported to have growth promotion capabilities [5,6,7,8,9]. These agents can enhance growth in a direct or an indirect manner, which is largely related to their antagonistic activity towards phytopathogens, but may be be attributed to their ability to induce resistance to abiotic stresses, such as salinity or drought, or by detoxification and elimination of heavy metals and other contaminating compounds. Other examples are provided by the biocontrol agent Trichoderma harzianum that increases phosphorous and other nutrient solubilization [9,10], and T. virens that enhance biomass and lateral root formation via auxin-dependent mechanisms in Arabidopsis [8]
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