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Azotobacter vinelandii helps to combat chromium stress in rice by maintaining antioxidant machinery

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Abstract

Chromium (Cr) causes toxic effects in plants by generating reactive oxygen species (ROS) which create oxidative environment. Azotobacter vinelandii helps in growth and development of many crops; however, its role in Cr stress tolerance in rice has not been explored. Here, we report the new function of Azotobacter vinelandii strain SRI Az3 (Accession number JQ796077) in providing Cr stress tolerance in Oryza sativa (var. IR64). The efficiency of the strain was checked under different concentrations (50, 100, 150, 200 and 250 µM) of Cr stress and it was observed that it provides stress tolerance to rice plant up to 200 µM concentration. Different agronomic growth parameters were found to be better in this strain of Azotobacter vinelandii-inoculated rice plants as compared to un-inoculated one. The agronomic growth and photosynthetic characteristics such as net photosynthetic rate (PN), stomatal conductance (gs), intercellular CO2 (Ci) were also found to be significantly increased with increasing concentration of Azotobacter vinelandii inoculation. The activities of antioxidant enzymes were significantly higher (35%) in rice plants inoculated with Azotobacter vinelandii as compared with un-inoculated rice plant. All these positive effects of Azotobacter vinelandii help rice to survive from the toxic effect of Cr.

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Acknowledgements

We are thankful to Dr. Madhusmita Pradhan for help in preparation of the manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biotechnology, Centurion University of Technology and Management, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

    Ranjan Kumar Sahoo

  2. Department of Crop Physiology, Birsa Agricultural University, Ranchi, Jharkhand, India

    Varsha Rani

  3. International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India

    Narendra Tuteja

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  1. Ranjan Kumar Sahoo
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  2. Varsha Rani
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  3. Narendra Tuteja
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RKS performed all the experiments and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. VR helped RKS during performing experiments. NT supervised all the experiments and wrote the final manuscript. All the authors have read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Narendra Tuteja.

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Sahoo, R.K., Rani, V. & Tuteja, N. Azotobacter vinelandii helps to combat chromium stress in rice by maintaining antioxidant machinery. 3 Biotech 11, 275 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13205-021-02835-3

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