Isolation, characterization and identification of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria from the rhizosphere of Acacia mangium at sandy BRIS soil

Highlights

● Isolation of potential PGPR from rhizosphere sandy BRIS soil of Acacia mangium .

● The isolated rhizobacteria showed significantly varied growth in organic molasses medium supplemented with KNO₃.

● The ability to fix atmospheric N₂, solubilize P and K, produce IAA and siderophores varied differently for single and mixed strains of the isolated rhizobacteria.

● The single or mixed strains of rhizobacteria had a significant effect on corn phenology, growth and yield.

● Identification of the isolated rhizobacteria at the molecular level.

Abstract

This study has isolated, characterized, and identified potential plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) with multiple PGP characteristics (N₂-fixation, P- and K-solubilization, IAA, and siderophores production) from the rhizosphere BRIS soil of Acacia mangium. A total of 24 pure colonies were isolated and only 8 colonies were selected for further evaluation of the growth rate in 5% organic molasses medium supplemented with 2% KNO₃. Based on the biochemical, potential PGP characteristics and growth performance, 3 superior PGPR strains were selected and identified as Paraburkholderia unamae (UA1), Bacillus amyloliquefaciens (UA6), and Enterobacter asburiae (UAA2) by partial sequencing of the 16S rRNA gene. The selected bacterial strains either in single or mixed (UA1 + UA6 + UAA2) cultures have shown a significant biochemical estimation of the PGP characteristics. Each strain has its own PGPR traits superiority with UA1 showing the best PGP characteristic followed by UA6 and UAA2. The use of mixed bacterial strains was beneficial as it showed the best performance in N₂-fixation, siderophores production, and significant effect on corn phenology, growth and yield compared to using a single strain. These types of microbes showed potential to be used as biofertilizer and should be exploited more.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Biofertilizer / corn / organic molasses me- dium / PGP characteristic / phytohormone / potassium nitrate / siderophores

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Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2024559 contains supplementary materials (Figs. S1–S4).

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia for the Knowledge Transfer Program—KTP Community grant [KTP/Bil 003/16 (KTP-R5)] and Center for Research Excellence and Incubation Management of UniSZA for the Pre-Commercialization grant (UniSZA/16/DPP/RR217).

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Zakiah Mustapha, Radziah Othman, Nik Nurnaeimah Nik Muhammad Nasir, Dhiya Dalila Zawawi, Mohd Khairi Che Lah, and Hafizan Juahir declare that they have no conflict of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2024. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)