Growth, nutrient uptake and yield parameters of chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) enhance by Rhizobium and Azotobacter inoculations in saline soil

Abstract

A field experiment was conducted during two consecutive growing seasons (2013 and 2014) to evaluate the effects of inoculations with Rhizobium and Azotobacter on the growth and yield of two chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) varieties under saline (5.8 dS m⁻¹) arid condition. The single treatment of either Rhizobium or Azotobacter exhibited to promote the growth of chickpea to some level, however, co-inoculation produced more effects and increased the shoot dry weight (30.3 and 26.4%), root dry weight (17.5 and 26.3%), nodule number (79.1 and 43.8 piece per plant), nitrogen content in roots (9.62 and 10.9%), in shoots (12.6 and 8.3%) and seed protein (7.1 and 4.3%) in both Flip06-102 and Uzbekistan-32 chickpea varieties compared to the control. Our studies showed that the highest yield response of 429 (27.9%) and 538 (23.9%) kg ha⁻¹ over the control was revealed by the co-inoculation with Rhizobium and Azotobacter inoculants in Flip 06-102 and Uzbekistan-32, respectively. A new introduced Flip 06-102 chickpea variety was more salt tolerant and had higher root nodulation than the local Uzbekistan-32 chickpea variety. Nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and potassium (K) contents in the shoots and roots were significantly (p < 0.05) higher in the co-inoculated treatment, while plant sodium (Na+) concentration was the lowest for both chickpea varieties exhibiting co-inoculation alleviated the detrimental effects of salinity. Therefore, the co-inoculation of Rhizobium plus Azotobacter could be applied to improve the vegetative growth and yield of chickpea and to alleviate the effects of salt stress.

Keywords:

• Azotobacter
• Rhizobium
• saline soil
• arid region climate
• desertification
• chickpea

Acknowledgments

We thank the ICARDA organization at Tashkent, Uzbekistan for partly funding this research and Ministry of Agriculture of Uzbekistan for granting the research project “QHA 08-029” and “Cooperative Research Program for Agricultural Science & Technology Development (Project No. PJ01283702)” Rural Development Administration, Republic of Korea. We thank the extension workers, researchers and dissemination partners involved in this research.