Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi and biochar improves drought tolerance in chickpea

Journal Article

2019

Published in: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sjbs.2018.11.005

Abd_Allah, Abeer Hashem, Ashwani Kumar, Abeer M. Al-Dbass, Abdulaziz A. Alqarawi, Al-Bandari Fahad Al-Arjani, Garima Singh, Muhammad Farooq, Elsayed Fathi . 2019

a b s t r a c t
Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) inoculation and biochar amendment has been reported to improve
growth of several crop plants however their role in stress amelioration individually as well as in combination
has not been worked out. This experiment was conducted to evaluate the application of AMF and
biochar on the performance of chickpea under drought stress. The treatments included the individual as
well as combined treatment of AMF and biochar to drought stressed and normal chickpea plants. Plants
inoculation improved growth in terms of shoot and root length, leaf area and number of branches which
was observed to show a steep decline due to drought stress. Drought declined the AMF colonization
potential though biochar amendment ameliorated the negative effects of drought significantly by
improving the spore population, number of mycelium, vesicle and arbuscules and the percentage of colonization
as well. Increased chlorophyll synthesis in biochar and AMF treated plants was obvious, which
lead to significant enhancement in the net photosynthetic efficiency. Drought stress also declined the relative
water content (RWC) and membrane stability index (MSI), while treatment of biochar and AMF
either individually or in combination mitigated the deleterious effects to considerable extent and caused
a significant enhancement in RWC and MSI under normal conditions. Amendments with biochar and AMF
inoculation increased the nitrogen fixation attributes including the number and weight of nodules, leghemoglobin
content and activity of nitrate reductase enzyme leading to greater uptake and assimilation of
nitrogen in them when compared to drought stressed plants. Drought stressed chickpea plants exhibited
considerable reduction in uptake of nitrogen and phosphorous which was ameliorated by biochar and
AMF treatments. It could be suggested that increase in growth and physiological attributes in chickpea
due to biochar amendments and AMF inoculation under drought stress were plausibly due to their
involvement in nitrogen and phosphorous uptake, chlorophyll synthesis and photosynthesis.

• Issue Number: 3
• Magazine \ Newspaper: Saudi Journal of Biological Sciences
• Pages: 614–624