Research
Nazish Nazir, Azra N. Kamili,
Abstract
The unrelenting demand for the production of trees in forests with a substantial decline in the consumption of manmade chemical fertilizers and pesticides is an immense task at the moment. Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) and fungi being the useful microbes which are extensively considered by microbiologists and agronomists as of their impending in growing crop production and offer innumerable methods to replace man-made chemical fertilizers, pesticides, etc., and therefore has significantly managed to their augmented demand. Throughout the present investigation, the microbial inoculants (Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus safensis, Penicillium griseoroseum and Trichoderma harzianum) were inoculated in various treatments to determine the impact on vegetative growth of Taxus wallichiana Zucc. (Himalayan yew) stem cuttings under nursery conditions. The pot experiment with 10 treatments including control and 3 replications with plot size comprising of 30 pots was arranged in Completely Randomized Design (CRD). Several growth characteristics viz., plant height, collar diameter, root length, fresh and dry biomass (shoot, root and total plant biomass) after the interlude of two months responded significantly to all the different treatments of microbial inoculants as compared to control. The combined treatment of the microbial inoculants showed the best results for all the growth characteristics as compared to isolated treatments and an increasing trend in all the growth characteristics was noticed up to December of the study period and in February it remains same as no growth was observed. Thus, our outcomes revealed that the application of microbial inoculants enhanced the growth traits of Himalayan yew stem cuttings under nursery conditions.