Alleviation of irrigation water salinity impact on the growth and yield of sweet potato by plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria inoculation
2024
Ramadan, M.E.S.
The present study investigates the use of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) inoculation to enhance sweet potato growth and yield under irrigation saline water conditions in the 2021 and 2022 seasons. The PGPR strains (Azotobacter chroococcum, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Bacillus megatherium) were isolated from the rhizosphere of plants growing in saline soil, and sweet potato plants were inoculated with a mixture of these PGPR strains in equal volumes. A field experiment was designed and performed in a split-plot design to determine the effect of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) on growth, photosynthetic pigments, yield, and tuber content of starch, vitamin C, and total soluble sugars of sweet potato plants under three different saline irrigation water conditions (1.90, 4.70, and 6.25 dS∙m⁻¹). The results demonstrated that increasing irrigation water salinity levels substantially reduced plant vine length, branch number, leaf number, shoot fresh weight, shoot dry weight, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, carotenoid content, tuber root number per plant, tuber root weight, and tuber yield and, meanwhile, enhanced starch, vitamin C, and total soluble sugars content. The PGPR inoculation dependently enhanced all the aforementioned parameters. However, it did not significantly impact the starch and vitamin C content of the tuber under irrigation water salinity-affected conditions. Overall, these results suggested that the PGPR inoculation of sweet potato plants can alleviate the harmful effects of saline irrigation water stress on plant growth.
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