engleski

Can PGP bacteria help plants deal with floods caused by the climate change?

Extreme climate events will increasingly disrupt vulnerable agricultural productivity, threatening food security, quality, and price stability. There is an urgent need for development of novel approaches for adaptation of crops to a quickly changing climate. Researchers have just started to focus on soil microbiota. Bacteria which colonize plant root and provide benefits (through variety of mechanisms) for plant growth and biocontrol so- called PGPB (plant-growth-promoting-bacteria) are of great importance. Within project entitled “Potential of the rhizosphere microbiome in the adaptation of agriculture to climate change (PERSPIRE)”, funded by the EU Regional Development Fund, we focused our research on the effects of flood (water retention following heavy rain), as a consequence of climate change, on the plant holobiont i.e. on this positive interaction that exist between soil microorganisms and its host plant. We settled our experiment in the controlled conditions (16 hours day/8 hours night ; 25 ˚C per day/20 ˚C per night ; 60-70% relative humidity), with the cabbage (Brassica oleracea var. capitata f. alba) used as a model plant. The experiment lasted, from seeding to the full end, for 57 days. Plants (triplicate trials) were subjected to either one (72 h duration) or two short-term flooding events (72 h duration, 10 days recovery between floods) at different stages of development. At different time points (day 0, after flooding and after recovery period) whole soil was removed from the pots, thoroughly mixed and subsamples were taken for PGPB isolation and analysis. PGPB were isolated by inoculation onto non-selective nutrient agar and incubation at 30 ˚C (3 Days). From each of the sample points cca. 20 morphologically different bacterial colonies were selected, purified and screened for different PGP characteristics by using plating culturable methods on various media. All together 140 isolates were tested for the ability to: produce indole acetic acid (IAA), asymbiotic N2 fixation, solubilisation of phosphate, production of siderophores and the synthesis of enzymes. We believe that, full understanding of the effects of climate change on PGPB, could represent first step forward toward potential using of PGPB isolate as bio inoculums for crops affected by flooding conditions.

climate change ; floods ; microorganisms ; soil ; PGPR ; holobiont

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