Abstract
The use of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria as a sustainable alternative for chemical nitrogen fertilizers has been explored for many economically important crops. For one such strain isolated from rice rhizosphere and endosphere, nitrogen-fixing Pseudomonas stutzeri A15, unequivocal evidence of the plant growth-promoting effect and the potential contribution of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is still lacking. In this study, we investigated the effect of P. stutzeri A15 inoculation on the growth of rice seedlings in greenhouse conditions. P. stutzeri A15 induced significant growth promotion compared to uninoculated rice seedlings. Furthermore, inoculation with strain A15 performed significantly better than chemical nitrogen fertilization, clearly pointing to the potential of this bacterium as biofertilizer. To assess the contribution of BNF to the plant growth-promoting effect, rice seedlings were also inoculated with a nitrogen fixation-deficient mutant. Our results suggest that BNF (at best) only partially contributes to the stimulation of plant growth.
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Abbreviations
- ARA:
-
Acetylene reduction assay
- BNF:
-
Biological nitrogen fixation
- KmR cassette:
-
Kanamycin resistance cassette
- PGPB:
-
Plant growth-promoting bacteria
- WAI:
-
Weeks after inoculation
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Acknowledgements
VTKP was granted the Faculty for the Future Fellowships 2014 and 2015 (Schlumberger Foundation). SS was supported by a postdoctoral grant from the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO-Vlaanderen). This research was funded by a Bilateral Research Cooperation Project between Vietnam and Belgium (Grant Nos. GA03812N and FWO.2011.29, FWO-NAFOSTED). The authors also wish to thank the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI, Philippines) for providing rice seeds of IR42.
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Communicated by Erko Stackebrandt.
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Pham, V.T.K., Rediers, H., Ghequire, M.G.K. et al. The plant growth-promoting effect of the nitrogen-fixing endophyte Pseudomonas stutzeri A15. Arch Microbiol 199, 513–517 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-016-1332-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-016-1332-3