Seyyed Esmaeil Mousavi, Heshmat Omidi, Ayatollah Saeedizadeh, Mehdi Aghighishahverdi,
Volume 7, Issue 2 (3-2021)
Extended Abstract
Introduction: Salinity is one of the most harmful factors in the arid and semi-arid regions in the world that influences crop production. Micro-organisms can play an important role in adaptation strategies of plants to stress and by producing of plant growth promotion hormones such as cytokinin, gibberellic acid, auxin, amino acids, and vitamins of B groups help to more growth of the plant and have an important role in increasing of tolerant in plants in unsuitable environments.
Material and Methods: This experiment was established as factorial in a completely randomized design with three replicates at Shahed University of Tehran. The treatments included salinity in four levels (0, 40, 80, and 120 mM NaCl) and biological pre-treatment at eight levels (control: non-inoculation), inoculation with Trichoderma harzianum fungus strain BI, with inoculation with azotobacter bio-fertilizer, inoculation with phosphate bio-fertilizer, inoculation with both bio-fertilizer, a combination of fungus and azotobacter bio-fertilizer, a combination of fungus and phosphate bio-fertilizer, inoculation with fungus and both bio-fertilizer). In this experiment, germination indices, photosynthetic pigments, proline, sodium, and potassium amount, starch, carbohydrate, electrical conductivity, and soluble protein were studied.
Results: The result showed that the interaction effect of biological pre-treatment and salinity was significant on all indices except chlorophyll b and anthocyanin. Treatment of phosphate bio-fertilizer had maximum positive effect on germination percent with increasing salinity. In the co-application of fungus and azotobacter bio-fertilizer treatment, the amounts of chlorophyll a, b, and total chlorophyll in different levels of salinity were more than the other treatments and were incremental with further increasing of salinity level. The highest amount of potassium (4.10 mg/g FW) obtained in the co-application of a fungus with azotobacter bio-fertilizer under 40 mM of salinity and showed 22.02 percent increase in comparison to control. With rising salinity, fungus treatments were the most effective in preventing more increasing sodium amount and azotobacter bio-fertilizer in preventing more reducing potassium. The number of soluble proteins was the highest amount (13.09 mg/g FW) in the co-application of fungus and both bio-fertilizer and showed 38% increase compared to control at the same level of salinity.
Conclusion: The uses of microorganisms reduced the negative effect of salinity and led to the increase of potassium in shoots. Also, utilization of microorganism led to lower electrical conductivity at the highest salinity level compared to control and thus, positively affected germination.
Highlights:
1- The effect of bio- primed bacteria and fungus on physiological traits of Pumpkin was investigated seedlings under salinity.
2- Threshold of tolerance of pumpkin seedlings to salinity was improved by increasing K content and reducing Na under bio- primed treatments.
3- Osmolite components of pumpkin seedlings increased under bio- primed treatments.
