Authors: Mariana Melchiorre Marcos J de Luca Gustavo Gonzalez Anta Paola Suarez Carlos Lopez Ramiro Lascano Roberto W Racca
Publish Date: 2010/09/22
Volume: 47, Issue: 1, Pages: 81-89
Abstract
Bradyrhizobium strains were isolated from nodules obtained from fieldgrown soybean plants sampled in 12 soybean production locations in Argentina These fields had been annually cropped with soybean and did not show decreases in yields even though they had been neither Nfertilized nor inoculated for at least the last 5 years We hypothesized that the isolated strains maintained high competitiveness and efficiency in fixing adequate N2 levels A set of strains that showed the highest nodular occupancy in each sampling location were assayed for symbiotic performance under greenhouse and field conditions and comparatively evaluated with Bradyrhizobium japonicum E109 the strain officially recommended for inoculant formulation in Argentina An inoculant pool formed by four strains obtained from nodules collected from Cañada Rica developed higher nodular biomass than B japonicum E 109 in assays carried out in greenhouses under well irrigated conditions Additionally neither nodule production nor specific nitrogenase activity decreased with respect to B japonicum E 109 when plants were drought stressed during 7 days from sowing The mean yields obtained under field conditions and plotted against the principal component one CP1 obtained with an additive main effect and multiplicative interaction AMMI model showed that the inoculant pool from Cañada Rica had higher contribution to yield than strain E 109 although with lower environmental stability The inoculant pool from Cañada Rica could be considered an improved inoculant and be used for preliminary assays to formulate inoculants in ArgentinaThe authors thank Dr Mario Aguilar and his group IBBMCONICET La PlataArgentina for their assistance in the use of GelCompar II software and Dr Cecilia Bruno for her assistance in statistical data analysis MM and RL are CONICET researchers RR is CONICETINTA researcher MdL and CL are INTA researchers PS is INTAtechnician and GGA is manager of Rizobacter Argentina SA This work was partially supported by Rizobacter Argentina SA
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