Associative N₂-fixation in pearl millet and sorghum: Levels and response to inoculation

Associative nitrogen fixation linked with three perennial bioenergy grasses in field and greenhouse experiments

“…The results presented herein are compelling, nevertheless, because they are supported by greenhouse studies and utilize a reasonable set of reference plants. Expectations of a soil source of N are also consistent with isotopic values derived from other varieties of non‐fixing sorghum (Lee, Wani, Yoneyama, Trimurtulu, & Harikrishnan, 1994; Urquiaga et al., 2012). Sorghum M‐81E thus shows promise as a viable reference plant to calculate Ndfa for perennial diazotroph‐associated grasses.…”

Improving Crop Yield and Nutrient Use Efficiency via Biofertilization—A Global Meta-analysis

“…Berruti et al ( 2016 ) found in their meta-analysis that both yield and plant nutrition were significantly improved by inoculation with AMF under open field conditions in 92% of 112 experiments. In the literature, some microorganisms with the ability to fix nitrogen have been shown to contribute only to a small extent to the N nutrition of crops, and that these results are highly variable (Lee et al, 1994 ; Bremer et al, 1995 ; Santi et al, 2013 ). Our results indicate that their contribution to yield is substantial and with low variation (Figure 3 ).…”

Pearl Millet

“…that are capable of fixing nitrogen (Boddey and Dobereiner, 1982). Direct comparisons of nitrogenase activity between inoculated pearl millet and several legumes in nonsterile soils suggest that actual amounts of N fixed in the millet case are likely to be of little agronomic significance even when soils are inoculated with selected strains (Bouton, 1988, Lee et al, 1994. Inoculation experiments with selected strains of several N-fixing bacteria have produced some positive results in some cases, particularly with sterilized soils, but not all cases (Lee et al, 1994;Smith et al, 1984;Wani et al, 1985).…”