Comparative Analysis of Single and Multibacterial Biofertilizer Treatment on the Growth of Zea mays L.

Abstract

In the recent era, pesticides and fertilizers are extensively used in agriculture to cope up the high agricultural demands of growing population. Although these chemical fertilizers have fulfilled human food requirements but being non-biodegradable and persistent in soil, they pose hazardous effect on the ecosystem and living beings. Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria play a substantial role that enables the plant to bear biotic and abiotic stresses. The current study is based on pre-germination treatment of Zea mays L. in which we using single and co-inoculum biofertilizers. For this purpose, two bacterial strains i.e., DS1 and ES3 were selected based on their auxin producing potential and applied on Zea mays L. for evaluation of their growth on physical parameters i.e., root length (RL), shoot length (SL), fresh weight (FW) and no of leaves (NL), and biochemical substances such as Proteins, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, total chlorophyll, catalase and peroxidase. The results demonstrated that coinoculum of these bacterial strains was more effective as compared to single bacterial strain. So, these bacterial strains can be used as potential growth promoting agents in place of chemical fertilizers.