Open Access

ARTICLE

Microbial inoculation of Parkinsonia praecox (Ruiz & Pav. ex Hook.) Hawkins for ecological restoration

Álvarez AS¹, DR Pérez²

1 Environmental Microbiology Research and Services Laboratory, School of Health and Environmental Sciences, National University of Comahue, Buenos Aires 1400, 8300 Neuquén, Neuquén, Argentina.
2 Laboratory of Rehabilitation and Ecological Restoration of Arid and Semiarid Ecosystems, School of Health and Environmental Sciences, National University of Comahue, Buenos Aires 1400, 8300 Neuquén, Neuquén, Argentina.

* Corresponding Author:Addresses correspondence to: Anahí Soledad Álvarez. Batistesa 2692 (8332) General Roca, Rio Negro, Argentina, e-mail:

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2018, 87(all), 274-279. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2018.87.274

Abstract

The use of microbial inocula for the restoration of severely degraded arid environments is of great interest. This is because there is a presumption that growth-favoring microorganisms can facilitate the establishment of seedlings by increasing their ability to withstand both the stress of transplantation in the case of nursery seedlings, and the extreme conditions for natural establishment imposed by the scarce, random and variable rainfall. In this work we analyze the “slenderness index”- the height of the plant divided by its diameter at the height cotyledon node- to analyze the effect of treatments with microorganisms in the nursery. This variable is a very feasible criterion for the selection of seedlings for ecological restoration because it is based on information that is easily obtainable in local nurseries. We evaluated this index in nursery seedlings of Parkinsonia praecox (Ruiz & Pav. ex Hook.) Hawkins, applying the following treatments: inoculation with the nitrogen-fixing, symbiotic bacterium Bradyrhizobium japonicum (TB), inoculation with the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus Glomus intraradices (TM), inoculation with a mixture of B. japonicum and G. intraradices (TBM), and a control with no inoculation (C). We used top soil of mounds from the Monte ecosystem as a base substrate. It is concluded that the microbial inoculation of native soils of mounds does not provide significant results applicable to the selection of nursery seedlings for ecological restoration in this species. The possible importance of the native soil and the inoculation of the microorganisms in the survival and growth of the species are discussed.

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