Friday, October 25, 2019

Microbes Improving the Sustainability of Crops in Higher Salinity Soil

By: Erik Zamarripa


Table 1. This table shows the Dry Weight, Relative Water Content (RWC), Chlorophyll (Chl) content, and Malondialdehyde (MDA) content for four different treatments. 1. CK: Corn seedling in sand and Hoagland nutrient solution. 2. T1: Same as CK but has 1% NaCl in nutrient solution. 3. T2: Same as CK but is inoculated with Bacillus aquimaris. 4. T3: Same as T1 but is inoculated with Bacillus aq.

Soils with excessive salt accumulation have a difficult time maintaining a sustainable environment for agriculture especially in arid and/or semi-arid areas. This is important because currently 800 million hectares of land in the world have soils that have excessive salt accumulation. The accumulation of salt in cultivated soils has increased due to poor irrigation water, excessive fertilization, and desertification process. The predominant salt found in these soils is sodium chloride (NaCl). Increased levels of NaCl in the soil can cause low crop productivity or even crop death since it can make it more difficult for the roots to uptake water and can cause a shift in the concentrations of Na and Cl in the plant. Some plants have developed ways to decrease the affects of excessive salt in the soil but not all of them have these types of adaptations. Corn for example, which is one the most important crops in agriculture, is considered to be salt sensitive. In order to combat this the application of plant growth-promoting bacteria is being tested. In this study Bacillus aquimaris DY-3 was used and it showed positive results in alleviating salt stress on the corn. Based on Table 1 taken from the study, Bacillus aq. showed to promote and increase in the corns dry weight mass, relative water content, and chlorophyll while also decreasing malondialdehyde, which is an indicator of cell membrane oxidative damage. Being able to take advantage of more land in the years to come will become very crucial as agriculture expands more, so having different methods like using plant growth-promoting bacteria to be able to grow crops such as corn in unfavorable soils is an important step forward in preparing for that.

Original Article:
Li HQ, Jiang XW. (2017). Inoculation with plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) improves salt tolerance of maize seedling. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1021443717020078#citeas
Li HQ, Jiang XW. (2017). Inoculation with plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) improves salt tolerance of maize seedling. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1021443717020078#citeas (Accessed October 25, 2019).
Li HQ, Jiang XW. (2017). Inoculation with plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) improves salt tolerance of maize seedling. SpringerLink. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1134/S1021443717020078#citeas (Accessed October 25, 2019).

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