An experiment was carried out to appraise the effect of seed priming treatment with Mg(NO3)2 against various levels of externally imposed moisture stress by polyethylene glycol-6000 on phytotoxicity in shoot and root and chlorophyll content in maize plant under laboratory conditions. The phytotoxicity of shoot and root was increased as the elevated levels of PEG-6000 towards T1 to T4 (i.e. 1.5 to 4.5 %, Set-I) as compared to control set (T0, i.e. without treated set), while the least values of phytotoxicity were recorded in T5 and onwards increased slowly up to T8 (i.e. 1.5 to 4.5 % of PEG-6000 + primed seed, Set-II). The same trend of phytotoxicity was recorded for both the plant parts at both the times of observations, i.e. shoot and root 120 and 240 hours. The chlorophyll content of shoot was recorded in decreasing trend onwards from T1 to T4 in treatment set-I as compared to T0, i.e. control. While the highest amount of chlorophyll content was recorded in T5 followed by T6 as compared to the rest of the treatments.

In this study, the efficiency of fungal consortia was evaluated on the degradation of rice straw by varying the initial carbon/nitrogen ratio of the compost piles. Consortia of three potent cellulose-degrading fungal strains: Aspergillus fumigatus, Aspergillus terreus and Aspergillus flavus were used as an inoculant to degrade rice straw in a 90-day composting process. The carbon/nitrogen ratio of the composting piles was varied by varying the proportion of bedding material in different treatments. The composts thus achieved were subjected to physic-chemical analysis and phytotoxicity assay using Solanum lycopersicum as test seeds. After 90 days of composting, compost from treatment 4 with initial carbon/nitrogen ratio 34 depicted maximum stability by achieving a final carbon/nitrogen ratio of 16.25. Compost from treatment 4 showed the highest Germination Index (%) followed by treatment 3 and treatment 2 as 94.32%, 88.88% and 79%, respectively on the growth of Solanum lycopersicum seeds. Results concluded that fungal consortia derived agro-waste compost with an initial carbon/nitrogen ratio 34 depicted the earliest maturity which is suggestive of its suitability for agricultural application.