PJB-2025-1512
Interactive impacts of endophytic fungus Trichoderma hamatum and biochar on salinity tolerance of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.)
Hmidah Abdulhadi Al-Abkari, Abeer Hashem, Amal A. Al-Hazzani and Elsayed Fathi Abd_Allah
Abstract
There are various reports available that confirm positive impact of biochar (BC) application with endophytic microbial strain to alleviate the adverse impact of abiotic stress on the plant development. Although, BC interactions with root-associated fungi are poorly understood. In the current study, we have used endophytic Trichoderma hamatum (TH) stain and BC to combat the salinity stress challenge in the alfalfa plant. As it is well known that, salinity stress adversely affected the morphological yields like length of root and shoot, dry and fresh weight of root and shoot, photosynthetic pigments, nodule dynamics and mineral contents in the alfalfa plants. In addition, salinity stress enhances the concentrations of stress markers such as malondialdehyde (MDA), H2O2, proline, and glycine betaine (GB) content while reduced the concentration of antioxidative enzymes such as superoxidedismutase activity (SOD) catalase (CAT), ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and glutathione reductase (GR). However the single of combined treatments of TH stain and BC showed modulatory impact of the morphological yields and enhanced the root fresh eight by 75%, 25% and 160%; shoot height by 68% 34% and 39% , photosynthetic pigments, Chl a increased by 34%, 24% and 48%; Chl b 21%,0%, 31%; Chl a+b 17%,15% and 18%; Carotenoids 55, 5% and 36% and total pigments 22%, 14% and 40% ; similarly nodule number increased by 78%, 10% and 128%, soluble proteins by 145%, 72% and 200%, leg haemoglobin content 50%,25% and 61%, and nodules nitrogenase activity 77%,31% and 109%; antioxidative enzymes SOD increased by 6%, 2% and 9%, catalase activity increased by 6%, 2% and 11%, APX activity increased by 19%, 7% and 29% and GR content increased by 10%, 1% and 24% after treatment of TH, BC and combined application of TH, BC respectively under saline conditions. However, reduced the concentration of osmolytes such as content of H2O2 was decreased by 39%, 27%,43%, MDA content decreased by 52%, 17% and 60%; the proline content decreased by 27%, 27% and 54% and the content of GB decreased by 19%, 10% and 65.30% after treatment with TH, BC and combination of TH and BC respectively. Although the extent of effect of treatments was lower in case of single treatments of BC, while maximum effect was observed in the combined application of TH and BC
To Cite this article:
Al-Abkari, H.A., A. Hashem, A.A. Al-Hazzani and E.F. Abd_Allah. 2025. Interactive impacts of endophytic fungus Trichoderma hamatum and biochar on salinity tolerance of alfalfa (Medicago sativa L.). Pak. J. Bot., 57(2): DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.30848/PJB2025-2(9)
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