PJB-2017-741
THE BACTERIA, Agrobacterium fabrum AND Stenotrophomonas maltophilia MITIGATE CADMIUM-TOXICITY STRESS IN WHEAT
Muhammad Zafar-ul-Hye
Abstract
Heavy metals induced stress is a big threat to soil health now a days. Heavy metals become part of the food chain through their uptake by plants and deteriorate the growth and productivity of plants and health of human beings too. Among all the heavy metals, cadmium is ubiquitously toxic due to its high water solubility. On the one hand, cadmium can cause cancer, cardiovascular diseases and neural abnormalities in humans when taken up in the form of food. On the other hand, it exerts negative effects on the plant growth and yield. Keeping in mind the importance of wheat as widely used staple food, a hy-droponic glass jar experiment was performed under axenic conditions for the screening of most efficient cadmium tolerant ACC deaminase PGPR from cadmium polluted (4.3 mg kg-1 Cd) wheat rhizosphere. It was noted that out of 20 strains, only 9 strains were capable of growing at 5 mg L-1 Cd level. The most efficient cadmium tolerant ACC deaminase PGPR that sig-nificantly enhanced morphological growth attributes in wheat plants under cadmium toxicity (2.5 and 5.0 mg L-1) were identified as Agrobacterium fabrum (CdtS5) and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia (CdtS7). The photosynthetic pigments were also enhanced significantly in wheat seedlings where Agrobacterium fabrum and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia were ap-plied as inocula. It is concluded that Agrobacterium fabrum and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia are ACC-deaminase con-taining PGPR strains which are cadmium tolerant and have ability to reduce the cadmium uptake by the plant and enhance the wheat growth.
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