Poster Presentation Australian Microbial Ecology 2019

Screening of potassium solubilizing strains to develop different microbial consortium for wheat production (#153)

Simranjit Kaur 1 , Jay Prakash Verma 2 , Arthur Prudêncio de A. Pereira 3 , Brajesh Kumar Singh 4
  1. Hawkebury Institute for Environment, UWS, Richmond, NSW, Australia
  2. Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development, BHU, Varanasi, India
  3. Department of Soil Science, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
  4. Centre Director of Global Centre for Land-Based Innovation, UWS, Sydney, Australia

Potassium (K) is an essential macronutrient, essential for regular biological functioning of plant and have significant impact on productivity but mainly present as insoluble form in soil. In this study, we have isolated, characterised and tested three soil bacteria which have shown potential to K-solubilization in addition to other plant growth promoting functional traits (IAA, P-solubilization, NH3). Based on 16S rRNA gene sequencing, these bacteria were identified; - Burkholderia sp., (KSB-1) Pseudomonas sp. (N55) - Pseudomonas sp. (P23). In a growth chamber experiment, we tested there capability in as a single isolate or in different consortia (KSB-1+ N55, KSB-1+ P23, N55+ P23, KSB-1+ N55+ P23). The controlled bio chamber experiment was conducted for wheat cultivar; Gazelle, to evaluate the impact of microbial inoculants on plant growth and productivity. We examined of shoot, root and grain yield response to inoculants treatments, which indicated that up to 29% (P23) and 16% (N55) increase root and shoot fresh weight, respectively over control. An increase of 15.76% (KSB-1) higher plant heights over control. For total productivity measured in terms of grain yield/plant, a noteworthy enhancement was recorded in all bacterial treatments in range of 46.57 to 16.43% over control. Future research will be focussed on identifying biotic (e.g. change in rhizosphere microbial communities) or abiotic (increase availability of nutrients) mechanisms that drives plant fitness and productivity gain and inoculants efficacy in field conditions with different wheat varieties.