Advantages of Amending Chemical Fertilizer with Plant-Growth-Promoting Rhizobacteria under Alternate Wetting Drying Rice Cultivation

Chesly Kit Kobua, Ying-Tzy Jou and Yu-Min Wang
Additional contact information
Chesly Kit Kobua: Department of Tropical Agriculture and International Cooperation, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung County 91201, Taiwan
Ying-Tzy Jou: Department of Biological Science and Technology, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung County 91201, Taiwan
Yu-Min Wang: General Research Service Center, National Pingtung University of Science and Technology, Pingtung County 91201, Taiwan

Agriculture, 2021, vol. 11, issue 7, 1-17

Abstract: Chemical fertilizer (CF) is necessary for optimal growth and grain production in rice farming. However, the continuous application of synthetic substances has adverse effects on the natural environment. Amending synthetic fertilizer with plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) is an alternate option to reduce CF usage. In this study, a field trial was undertaken in southern Taiwan. We aimed to investigate the effects of reducing CF, either partially or completely, with PGPR on the vegetative growth, biomass production, and grain yield of rice plants cultivated under alternate wetting and drying (AWD) cultivation. In addition, we aimed to determine an optimal reduction in CF dose when incorporated with PGPR for application in rice cultivation under AWD. The trial consisted of four treatments, namely, 0% CF + 100% PGPR (FP1), 25% CF + 75% PGPR (FP2) 50% CF + 50% PGPR (FP3), and 100% CF + 0% PGPR (CONT). A randomized complete blocked design (RCBD) with three replicates was used. A reduction in CF by 25–50% with the difference compensated by PGPR significantly ( p ≤ 0.05) influenced the crops biomass production. This improved the percentage of filled grains (PFG), and the thousand-grain weight (1000-GW) of treated plants by 4–5%. These improvements in growth and yield components eventually increased the grain yield production by 14%. It is concluded that partial replacement of CF with PGPR could be a viable approach to reduce the use of CF in existing rice cultivation systems. Furthermore, the approach has potential as a sustainable technique for rice cultivation.

Keywords: plant-growth-promoting bacteria; dry matter partitioning; harvest index; rice cultivation methods; rice; sustainable agriculture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/7/605/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/11/7/605/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:11:y:2021:i:7:p:605-:d:584537

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().