Beneficial Bacteria Give it Away for Drought Resistant Chili Pepper Plants

By: Alexandra Ortiz

The Use of Plant-Growth Promoting Bacteria for Drought-Resistant Crops.  Overview of how plant-growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) play a role in defending the chili pepper plant from drought stress. PGPBs can serve as biostimulants by reducing the levels of stress hormones produced and biofertilizers by making limiting nutrients such as phosphate and iron more available for plants. Root colonization is important in PGPBs for critical plant-bacterial interactions such as the production of specialized compounds that prevent desiccation. Image source: Alexandra Ortiz.

Drought is one of the largest causes of crop yield losses across the world. With increasing demands for water, there is a need to expand biotechnological approaches for the development of drought-resistant plants or the use of drought-resistant plant growth-promoting microorganisms. Horticultural crops such as chili peppers are extremely sensitive to moisture stress, specifically in the root zone, therefore, water is crucial for the cultivation of these high-value crops (Walters and Jha, 2016). Vigani and colleagues proposed the use of two known plant growth-promoting pepper associated bacteria to defend the plant from dry conditions in a hydroponic and terrestrial system. They suggested that the bacteria’s plant growth-promoting characteristics that allow for enhanced nutrient availability, reduced stress hormone production, and root colonization abilities coupled with resistance to drought conditions would enhance the pepper plant’s survival under low moisture conditions. They were able to find that pepper plants grown in drought-stressed hydroponic systems that were subjected to the bacteria had no visible symptoms of drought stress. In soil, drought-stressed plants showed no significant differences in biomass when compared to the irrigated, uninoculated plants. Therefore, Vigani et al., (2019) were able to utilize these bacteria to protect the pepper plants from drought in soil and hydroponic systems.

References

Walters, S.A., and A.K. Jha. (2016). Sustaining Chili Pepper Production in Afghanistan through Better Irrigation Practices and Management. Agriculture 6(4), 62.