Salt stress mitigation in by combining different microbial inocula.

UNLABELLED

Arid and semi-arid areas are considered vulnerable to various environmental constraints which are further fortified by climate change. Salinity is one of the most serious abiotic factors affecting crop yield and soil fertility. Till now, no information is available on the effect of salinity on development and symbiotic nitrogen (N) fixation in the legume species . Here, we evaluated the effect of different microbial inocula including nitrogen-fixing , arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (AMF) , a complex mixed inoculum of AMF isolated from rhizospheric soil in "Al Aitha", and various plant growth-promoting bacteria (PGPB) including and combined with Rhizobium, the AMF consortium, or on alleviating salt stress in this legume. A pot trial was conducted to evaluate the ability of different microbial inocula to mitigate adverse effects of salinity on plants. The results showed that salinity (100 mM NaCl) significantly reduced plant growth. However, inoculation with different inocula enhanced plant growth and markedly promoted various biochemical traits. Moreover, the combined use of PGPB and AMF was found to be the most effective treatment in mitigating deleterious effects of salinity stress on . In addition, this co-inoculation upregulated the expression of two marker genes ( and ) related to salinity tolerance. Our findings suggest that the AMF/PGPB formulation has a great potential to be used as a biofertilizer to improve plant growth and productivity under saline conditions.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-022-01205-4.