article · Plants
Wheat cultivation in saline soils facing water deficits suffers from restricted growth and diminished crop yields. A two-season field study examined how soil amendments using compost and beneficial plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, applied individually or combined, affect soil health and crop resilience. The findings demonstrated that applying compost together with rhizobacteria significantly lessened the harmful effects of salt and water stress. This dual treatment reduced the exchangeable sodium percentage and sodium uptake in plants while boosting beneficial soil enzymes such as urease and dehydrogenase. In wheat crops, the combined treatment stimulated antioxidant enzymes, preserved cellular water content and photosynthetic pigments, and promoted the uptake of key nutrients including nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Consequently, this collaborative soil treatment effectively counteracted oxidative damage, supported plant physiological functions, and improved overall wheat yield traits under harsh growing conditions.
Agricultural land frequently experiences combined pressures from water scarcity and soil salinity, which threaten global grain supplies. Finding practical, biological soil amendments helps safeguard wheat production under changing environmental conditions. By demonstrating that compost and beneficial bacteria work together to restore soil functions and protect plant health, this research offers a practical approach to sustaining cereal yields in marginal and stress-prone farming environments.
This research provides applied and tested field-level evidence for using combined compost and bacterial inoculant treatments. Agricultural input suppliers, biofertiliser manufacturers, and cereal growers could deploy these biological soil amendments to rehabilitate salt-affected land and sustain wheat production in water-scarce regions. While verified over two growing seasons in field trials, practical use would depend on formulating scalable, shelf-stable inoculants paired with accessible local compost sources.
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Plant growth and crop productivity under unfavorable environmental challenges require a unique strategy to scavenge the severely negative impacts of these challenges such as soil salinity and water stress. Compost and plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) have many beneficial impacts, particularly in plants exposed to different types of stress. Therefore, a field experiment during two successive seasons was conducted to investigate the impact of compost and PGPR either separately or in a combination on exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP), soil enzymes (urease and dehydrogenase), wheat physiology, antioxidant defense system, growth, and productivity under deficient irrigation and soil salinity conditions. Our findings showed that exposure of wheat plants to deficit irrigation in salt-affected soil inhibited wheat growth and development, and eventually reduced crop productivity. However, these injurious impacts were diminished after soil amendment using the combined application of compost and PGPR. This combined application enhanced soil urease and dehydrogenase, ion selectivity, chlorophylls, carotenoids, stomatal conductance, and the relative water content (RWC) whilst reducing ESP, proline content, which eventually increased the yield-related traits of wheat plants under deficient irrigation conditions. Moreover, the coupled application of compost and PGPR reduced the uptake of Na and resulted in an increment in superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), and peroxidase (POX) activities that lessened oxidative damage and improved the nutrient uptake (N, P, and K) of deficiently irrigated wheat plants under soil salinity. It was concluded that to protect wheat plants from environmental stressors, such as water stress and soil salinity, co-application of compost with PGPR was found to be effective.
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DOI: 10.3390/plants11070877
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