Feeding an overgrowing population with limited availability of fertile land is the burning issue for sustainable agriculture. To provide more production but not at the cost of pollution and soil fertility degradation is the real challenge for the future. Plant growth promoting bacteria are nature’s gift to mankind to overcome this situation. Looking to this aspect, the present study has been designed. The field experiment for consecutive 2 years were conducted to evaluate the efficacy of native ST-PGPB consortium Bio NP liquid formulation on growth and yield attributes of wheat. The experiments were conducted in randomized block design during the Rabi 2018-19 and 2019-20, respectively. There was significant difference observed in plant height at harvest and in yield attributing characters like, number of total tillers and effective tillers per meter row length, grains per spike, straw and grain yield. However, the results were non-significant differences in plant population, plant height at 30 DAS and on test weight of wheat under field condition. Treatment T4 (50 % RDF + 25 % N by Castor cake + Bio NP) found superior to other treatments for all growth and yield attributing parameters, grain yield (2500 kg/ha) and straw yield (4997 kg/ha) and remained at par with treatments T1(100 % RDF) followed by T3(75 % RDF + Bio NP) and T5(50 % RDF + 25 % N by Vermicompost + Bio NP), respectively. Treatment T2 (75 % RDF) found inferior for growth parameters and yield attributes of wheat.

Plant growth promoting bacterial consortium, Bio NP, Salt tolerant bacteria, Growth, Yield, Wheat

The effect of Bio NP formulation prepared from native salt tolerant PGPB were found helpful in improving grain and straw yield and remained at par with the RDF. Overall field study for two years clearly showed that ST Bio NP consortium helped in optimum growth and superior yield of wheat with saving of 25% fertilizers, was highly encouraging and unique research outcome in low saline soil (EC 0.4 dsm-1) and under restricted irrigation conditions of saline water (TDS >3250 ppm). Furthermore, when native Bio NP consortium used with organic sources like castor cake or vermicompost in wheat, the 50 % of chemical load was observed to be curtailed, this may reduce deterioration of soil and keep agro-ecosystem sustainable in long run.

Saiyad M.M., Vyas R.V., Mevada K.D. and Patel H.K. (2023). Efficacy of Salt Tolerant Plant Growth Promoting Bacterial Liquid Consortium on Growth and Yield of Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.). Biological Forum – An International Journal, 15(11): 223-229.