Evaluation of microbial consortia on paddy grown under organic, inorganic and integrated production system
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Date
2021-01
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G.B. Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar - 263145 (Uttarakhand)
Abstract
The farmers and researchers are trying various combination of organic as well as inorganic fertilizers in agriculture to gain maximum produce without damage of soil health to fulfill the food demands of surging population across the globe. Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs) play an important role in sustainable agriculture through the improvement of plant growth via different processes like biological nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, potassium solubilization, zinc solubilization, siderophore production and phytohormone synthesis. The use of PGPR is potentially increased in sustainable farming due to its eco-friendly and efficient nature. The present study is accomplished with implementation of potential plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs) in different production systems i.e., organic, inorganic and integrated production system to compare and screen out the best combination for maximum yield. For this study, four bacterial isolates were retrieved from departmental culture collection and tested for various biochemical tests including carbohydrate utilization for various sources and antibiotic sensitivity assay. All the selected bacterial isolates were utilized for preparation of consortia on the basis of biocompatibility assay. Afterwards, bacterial isolates and their two consortia (C1 & C2) were tested for PGP traits like IAA production, phosphate solubilization, zinc solubilization, siderophore production, potassium solubilization, nitrogen fixation etc. On the basis of plant growth promoting traits analysis, consortium 1(SRK 14, MRC II 6) was selected for field experiment. The consortia 1 treated paddy seedlings were evaluated for growth and yield under different treatments of organic, inorganic and integrated production system. The results of the present study showed that treatment of microbial consortium (C1) was able to enhance the total chlorophyll content, carotenoid content, plant height, number of tillers, root length, root volume, panicle length, grain weight per panicle, thousand grain weight, effective tillers/m2, grain yield and total biological yield in all treatments. However, the maximum results for all parameters were recorded in treatment 6 (T6) under integrated I production system having combination of 50% organic fertilizers + 50% inorganic fertilizers + microbial consortia. Along with integrated production system, the use of consortium (C1) gave maximum results in organic as well as inorganic production systems indicating its promising potential. Hence, developed microbial consortia can be used as plant growth promoting biofertilizer to enhance plant growth and yield of paddy under field system in sustainable manner.