Raheleh Ghale Ghafi; Hossein HajiAbaee; Fathieh Nabhani; Salvia Mohammadpour; Zahra Ardanji Kalate Siyahdasht
Abstract
Objective: This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the influence of mycorrhizal fungi (Rhizophagus irigularis) and rhizobacteria (Pseudomonas fluorescens) inoculation on maize under different fertilization conditions.Methods: This study was carried out in two separate experiments under ...
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Objective: This study was conducted with the aim of investigating the influence of mycorrhizal fungi (Rhizophagus irigularis) and rhizobacteria (Pseudomonas fluorescens) inoculation on maize under different fertilization conditions.Methods: This study was carried out in two separate experiments under greenhouse settings in 2018. The first experiment aimed to compare the conventional soil inoculation method with microbial seed coating, and the second experiment strived to assess the growth of maize inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi and plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria via microbial seed coating at three treatment levels of Hoagland nutrient solution (Control, 80 and 100 volumetric percentage of Hoagland solution). In both experiments, one gram of maize roots and adhering soil were sampled 70 days after microbial seed coating and the available DNA was extracted from the maize rhizosphere.Results: In the first experiment, no significant difference was observed between conventional soil inoculation and microbial seed coating concerning the dry weight of stems and roots, longitudinal colonization percentage of the roots, arbuscule abundance, vesicles abundance, and elemental concentration. In the second experiment and under full fertilization condition, mycorrhizal inoculation resulted in a significant increase in concentrations of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and zinc (18.1, 3.5, 56 and 46.0 mg/kg, respectively) compared to the control treatment (12.6, 3.1, 39.6, and 24.4 mg/kg, respectively), and the bacterial inoculation exhibited a significant increase for magnesium, zinc, and manganese (2.0, 42.6, and 145 mg/kg, respectively) compared to the control treatment (1.0, 24.4, and 60 mg/kg, respectively).Conclusion: Microbial seed coating could be regarded as a novel approach of large-scale inoculation of microorganisms in maize production.