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Background: Nitrogen is an essential element for sugarcane growth and development and is generally applied in the form of urea often much more than at recommended rates, causing serious soil degradation, particularly soil acidification, as well as groundwater and air pollution. In spite of the importance of nitrogen for plant growth, fewer reports are available to understand the application and biological role of N 2 fixing bacteria to improve N 2 nutrition in the sugarcane plant.

Water stress causes considerable yield losses in sugarcane. To investigate differentially expressed genes under water stress, a pot experiment was performed with the sugarcane variety GT21 at three water-deficit levels (mild, moderate, and severe) during the elongation stage and gene expression was analyzed using microarray technology. Physiological parameters of sugarcane showed significant alterations in response to drought stress. Based on the expression profile of 15,593 sugarcane genes, 1,501 (9.6%) genes were differentially expressed under different water-level treatments; 821 genes were upregulated and 680 genes were downregulated. A gene similarity analysis showed that approximately 62.6% of the differentially expressed genes shared homology with functional proteins. In a Gene Ontology (GO) analysis, 901 differentially expressed genes were assigned to 36 GO categories. Moreover, 325 differentially expressed genes were classified into 101 pathway categories involved in various processes, such as the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, ribosomes, carbon metabolism, etc. In addition, some unannotated genes were detected; these may provide a basis for studies of water-deficit tolerance. The reliability of the observed expression patterns was confirmed by RT-PCR. The results of this study may help identify useful genes for improving drought tolerance in sugarcane.

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Plant protection through siderophore producing rhizobacteria (SPR) has emerged as a sustainable approach for crop health management. In present study, 220 bacteria isolated from tomato rhizosphere were screened for in vitro antagonistic activity against Rhizoctonia solani AG-4. Nine potent antagonistic strains viz., Alcaligenes sp. (MUN1, MB21, and MPF37), Enterobacter sp. (MPM1), Pseudomonas sp. (M10A and MB65), P. aeruginosa (MPF14 and MB123) and P. fluorescens (MPF47) were identified on the basis of physiological characters and 16S rDNA sequencing. These strains were able to produce hydrolytic enzymes, hydrogen cyanide, indole acetic acid, although, only few strains were able to solubilize phosphate. Two strains (MB123 and MPF47) showed significant disease reduction in glasshouse conditions were further evaluated under field conditions using three different application methods. Application of P. fluorescens (MPF47) in nursery as soil mix + seedling root treatments prior to transplantation resulted in significant disease reduction compared to control. Total chlorophyll and available iron were significantly higher in the MPF47 treated plants in contrast to infected control. In conclusion, siderophore producing bacteria MPF47 have strong biocontrol abilities and its application as soil mix + seedling root treatments provided strong shield to plant roots against R. solani and could be used for effective bio-management of pathogen.

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