Combination of agricultural waste compost and biofertilizer improves yield and enhances the sustainability of a pepper field

Abstract

Application of plant growth‐promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) has been considered as an environmentally friendly method for crop yield promotion as well as plant disease management. Efforts have been devoted to unraveling mechanisms involved in bacteria–plant and bacteria–pathogen interactions. However, little is known on the effect of the interaction among PGPR, soil, and plant. We compared growth and yield promotion capacity of biofertilizer Ning Shield, a consortium of bacterial preparation used as a biofertilizer (BF), and its mixture with compost of agricultural waste including spent substrate of Pleurotus ostreatus (SSP)/Volvariella volvacea (SSV), chicken manure (CM), and inorganic fertilizer (IOF) in a pepper field, respectively. The disease control efficacy, pepper fruit preservation time, and nutrients were also determined. Soil nutrient parameters including organic matter and available NPK of treatments were assayed before and after one growth season. All of the mixture of BF+organic compost treatment significantly enhanced the yield and quality of pepper fruit. Moreover, disease control capacity was promoted by the mixture of BF+organic compost, with BF+SSV reaching the highest control efficacy of 81% on 60th day after transplanting, and remaining 76% at the 105th day. The BF+SSV treatment showed soil fertility retention ability with higher soil nutrient contents after one growth season of pepper. This study provides evidence that, when combined with organic fertilizers such as spent mushroom substrate compost, beneficial microbes have the ability to promote plant growth and yield as well as suppress plant disease by sustaining soil fertility through complex bacteria–soil–plant interaction.

Combination of beneficial bacteria improves blueberry production and soil quality

“…The additional bacteria in M2 treatment increased the soluble sugar content of blueberry fruit by 4.21%, the content of vitamin C by 17.31%, the content of soluble solids by 2.41%, and the content of soluble protein by 21.65%, while titratable acid in fruit was reduced by 10.81% (Figure 2). These results are consistent with the previously report, in which the application of the microbial consortium improved the fruit quality of pepper (Yu et al., 2019). It has also been reported that the beneficial microorganisms are able to increase the accumulation of soluble sugar in plants by enhancing photosynthesis (Jha & Subramanian, 2018).…”

Biofertilizers as Strategies to Improve Photosynthetic Apparatus, Growth, and Drought Stress Tolerance in the Date Palm

“…Nadeem and colleagues (2014) showed that AMF and PGPR can regulate mineral nutrition by solubilizing nutrients in the soil and producing plant growth regulators (i.e., hormones). Several studies have indicated that compost, AMF and PGPR improve plant growth through the assimilation of immobile soil nutrients such as N and P (Yadav et al, 2013;Baslam et al, 2014;Al-Karaki, 2016;Barje et al, 2016;Frosi et al, 2016;Yang et al, 2018;Raklami et al, 2019;Yu et al, 2019). Here we showed that inoculated and amended date palm plants had considerably higher mineral nutrient content (P and N) as compared to controls under water deficit conditions allowing higher plant performance.…”

Organic amendments alleviate early defoliation and increase fruit yield by altering assembly patterns and of microbial communities and enzymatic activities in sandy pear (Pyrus pyrifolia)

“…Bioorganic fertilizer (BIO) is an organic amendment prepared by secondary solid-state fermentation of organic materials, with the addition of specific functional microbial strains. It has been widely used in apple (Wang et al 2016 ), banana (Shen et al 2019 ), pepper (Yu et al 2019 ), and kiwi (Liu et al 2020c ) orchards to improve soil biological fertility, and restructure soil microflora. Soil microbes have an enormous impact on soil fertility, ecosystem sustainability, as well as plant health and growth (Gu et al 2019 ; Li et al 2021 ; Ma et al 2018 ; Zhang et al 2021 ).…”