Assessing the Potential Role of Compost, PGPR, and AMF in Improving Tomato Plant Growth, Yield, Fruit Quality, and Water Stress Tolerance
Résumé
Among abiotic stresses, drought is considered the most important growth-limiting factor, particularly in arid and semiarid regions. Therefore, new management strategies are needed to resolve and mitigate these negative consequences, improve soil quality and plant growth, and rationalize water use. In this context, we investigated the role of beneficial plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) consortium, and compost (Comp) in improving tomato growth and yield, and drought tolerance. A completely randomized design was used in this experiment with the water stress as the main factor consisting of two treatments: (1) control well-watered (WW) plants (75% field capacity (FC)) and (2) water-stressed (WS) plants (35% FC), and the fertilization as a subfactor consisting of eight treatments. Growth parameters (shoot and root dry weight, leaf number, and area), productivity (fruit number and weight), mineral content (Ca2+, Na+, K+, and P), biochemical parameters (sugar, protein, and polyphenols), and antioxidant enzyme activities (polyphenoloxidase, peroxidase, catalase, and superoxide dismutase) were evaluated to investigate the effect of both factor. Soil physicochemical and microbial properties were examined after the experiment to assess the impact of water stress and applied biofertilizers on these parameters. Water stress affected negatively plant growth traits and yield and unbalanced the antioxidant enzymes.