Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
suggesting that this combination of fertilizer and PSB could serve as a sound
strategy for sustainable production of potato in any conducive environment.
Tomato (
Lycopersicon esculentum
Mill) is the other important vegetable crop,
which contains some important minerals and vitamins. Tomatoes, eaten freely
throughout the world, are believed to benefit the heart among other things. Lyco-
pene is one of the most powerful antioxidants found in tomato, and, when cooked,
tomatoes have been found beneficial in preventing prostate cancer. The NPK are the
most important nutrients supporting its growth, while deficiency of any one of these
nutrients limits growth and yield. To increase the availability of P for plants, large
amounts of phosphatic fertilizer are used on a regular basis. However, due to
reasons explained in the other section (Sect.
12.3.1
), PS microorganisms are
considered to supply P to tomato plants in a more economical and hazard-free
manner. For example, the PS bacteria isolated from tomato rhizosphere efficiently
promoted the growth of tomato plants under laboratory conditions. Moreover, shoot
length, root length, fresh weight, dry weight, and P content of the plants were
increased following PSB application over control. The concentration of available P
in rhizospheric soil collected after 30 days growth of tomato plants was higher in
rhizospheric soil samples of plants bacterized with PSB over control. The inocu-
lated tomato plants accumulated more P than control plants. Subsequently, the
PSB-inoculated plants were healthier and were protected well from diseases like
Fusarium
wilt and early blight, and hence, the overall disease incidence was
significantly decreased in the inoculated plants (Hariprasad and Niranjana
2009
).
Also, two PS bacterial isolates (
Pantoea agglomerans
and
Burkholderia anthina
)in
a pot experiment under greenhouse conditions remarkably enhanced plant height,
root length, shoot and root dry weight, P uptake of tomato plants, and available P
content of soil compared to the control. The enhancement was more pronounced in
co-inoculation of PSB strains with TCP. It was, therefore, concluded that the PSB
strains possessed greater potential to be developed as biofertilizers for enhancing
soil fertility and concurrently the health of tomato plants (Walpola and Min-Ho
2013
) Also, the impact of
Bacillus
application along with fertilizer treatment on
growth and phosphorous content of tomato was studied. Similar increase in tomato
growth and yields following
Pseudomonas
(El-Tantawy and Mohamed
2009
)or
other PSB inoculation is reported (Awasthi et al.
2011
).
12.4.3 Cucumber and Pepper
The impact of a P solubilizer
Bacillus megaterium
var.
phosphaticum
on cucumber
and pepper in nutrient-deficient soils was variable, but this strain enhanced nutrient
P uptake from the soil and promoted the growth of plants. The availability of P
increased further for plants inoculated with PSB when applied with RP (Han and
Supanjani
2006
). Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (
Pseudomonas
sp.), PS
biofertilizer prepared from
Pseudomonas putida
strain P13 and
P. agglomerans
strain P5, and chemical fertilizers were used in a separate experiment to evaluate
