Comparative effectiveness of different carriers to improve the efficacy of bacterial consortium for enhancing wheat production under salt affected field conditions

Salinity is one of the most crucial problems for sustainable agriculture which is severely affecting crop growth and decreasing the food production. on another hand,burgeoning population in the world demands to produce more food. so,there is a need of hours to increase agricultural production particularly cereals from salt affected soils by adopting cost effective and environment friendly approaches. use of bio-inoculants with salt tolerant plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (pgpr) could be a promising option to enhance the production of cereals in salt affected soils. therefore,a field experiment was conducted to evaluate different carriers compost,peat,biogas slurry and press mud along with pgpr to enhance wheat production under salinity stress. consortium containing equal proportion of three pgpr strains (bacillus cereus strain y5,bacillus sp. y14 and bacillus subtilis strain y16) was used with different carriers for seed coating. finely ground and sterilized carriers were mixed in broth and coated on the surface of wheat seeds with different carriers. coated seeds were sown in saline field with salinity range of 10−13 ds m−1. results revealed that multi−strain bacterial inoculation improved the gas exchange,ionic,biochemical,growth and yield attributes of wheat crop under salinity stress. however,use of different carriers further improved the efficacy of multi−strain inoculation and significantly increased growth,yield and physiological parameters of wheat. the results of compost,peat and biogas slurry as carrier for bio−inoculants were statistically similar. © 2017,pakistan botanical society. all rights reserved.