Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria Improve Growth, Morph-Physiological Responses, Water Productivity, and Yield of Rice Plants Under Full and Deficit Drip Irrigation

Taia A Abd El-Mageed; Shimaa A Abd El-Mageed; Mohamed T El-Saadony; Sayed Abdelaziz; Nasr M Abdou

doi:10.1186/s12284-022-00564-6

Plant Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria Improve Growth, Morph-Physiological Responses, Water Productivity, and Yield of Rice Plants Under Full and Deficit Drip Irrigation

Rice (N Y). 2022 Mar 14;15(1):16. doi: 10.1186/s12284-022-00564-6.

Authors

Taia A Abd El-Mageed¹, Shimaa A Abd El-Mageed², Mohamed T El-Saadony³, Sayed Abdelaziz⁴, Nasr M Abdou⁵

Affiliations

¹ Soil and Water Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Fayoum University, Fayoum, 63514, Egypt. taa00@fayoum.edu.eg.
² Agronomy Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Fayoum University, Fayoum, 63514, Egypt.
³ Department of Agricultural Microbiology, Faculty of Agriculture, Zagazig University, Zagazig, 44511, Egypt.
⁴ Department of Agricultural Microbiology, Faculty of Agriculture, Fayoum University, Fayoum, 63514, Egypt.
⁵ Soil and Water Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Fayoum University, Fayoum, 63514, Egypt.

Abstract

Inoculating rice plants by plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) may be used as a practical and eco-friendly approach to sustain the growth and yield of drought stressed rice plants. The effect of rice inoculation using plant growth hormones was investigated under drip full irrigation (FI; 100% of evapotranspiration (ETc), and deficit irrigation (DI; 80% of ETc) on growth, physiological responses, yields and water productivities under saline soil (ECe = 6.87 dS m^-1) for 2017 and 2018 seasons. Growth (i.e. shoot length and shoot dry weight), leaf photosynthetic pigments (chlorophyll 'a' and chlorophyll 'b' content), air-canopy temperature (Tc-Ta), membrane stability index (MSI%), and relative water content, (RWC%) chlorophyll fluorescence (F_v/F_m) stomatal conductance (gs), total phenols, peroxidase (PO), polyphenol oxidase (PPO), nitrogen contents and water productivities (grain water productivity; G-WP and straw water productivity; S-WP) were positively affected and significantly (p < 0.05) differed in two seasons in response to the applied PGPR treatments. The highest yields (3.35 and 6.7 t ha^-1 for grain and straw yields) as the average for both years were recorded under full irrigation and plants inoculated by PGPR. The results indicated that under water scarcity, application of (I₈₀ + PGPR) treatment was found to be favorable to save 20% of the applied irrigation water, to produce not only the same yields, approximately, but also to save more water as compared to I_100%.

Keywords: Air–canopy temperature (Tc–Ta); Antioxidant system; Chlorophyll fluorescence; PGPR; Rice; Water relations; Yields.