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Non-negligible Effect of Native Rhizobacteria on Cooperation with Plant Growth Regulators Improve Tolerance to Cadmium: A Case Study Using Duckweed Spirodela polyrhiza as Indicating Plant

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Abstract

Plant growth regulators (PGRs) are well known for their ability to improve plants’ tolerance to heavy metals. However, in these treatments, the contribution of native rhizobacteria on heightened tolerance to heavy metals is usually not considered, and thus PGR ability is overestimated. In this study, using duckweed Spirodela polyrhiza as indicating plant and according to the responses of it grown under nonsterile and sterile conditions, native rhizobacteria were able to cooperate with PGRs and thereby improved duckweed’s tolerance to Cd stress. All the randomly selected bacterial isolates and salicylic acid exerted synergistic effects that improved Cd tolerance, suggesting that active rhizobacteria are not necessarily plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPRs). Comparative physiological and transcriptomic analyses showed that the cooperation between the native bacterium Pseudomonas and salicylic acid can greatly reduce Cd accumulation and decrease oxidative stress, thus lowering the requirement of antioxidant defense in duckweed; moreover, the synthesis of flavonoids that facilitates reactive oxygen species scavenging in duckweed was significantly induced. This study recommends that the contribution of native rhizobacteria on improved plant tolerance to heavy metals should be considered when applying PGRs.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41977034 and No. 91951118), the Guangdong Basic and Applied Basic Research Foundation (No. 2021A1515010565), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (no. 2022ZYGXZR040).

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  1. Guangdong Key Laboratory of Fermentation and Enzyme Engineering, School of Biology and Biological Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, 510006, People’s Republic of China

    Demei Mu, Weitie Lin & Jianfei Luo

  2. Agricultural Engineering Research Institute, Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hefei, 230001, China

    Demei Mu

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MD, LW and LJ conceived and designed the experiments. MD performed the experiments. MD and LJ wrote original manuscript. LW and LJ revised the manuscript and supervised the research.

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Mu, D., Lin, W. & Luo, J. Non-negligible Effect of Native Rhizobacteria on Cooperation with Plant Growth Regulators Improve Tolerance to Cadmium: A Case Study Using Duckweed Spirodela polyrhiza as Indicating Plant. J Plant Growth Regul (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-023-10954-9

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