Salt stress resilience potential of a fungal inoculant isolated from tea cultivation area in maize

Abstract

Agriculture needs to be sustained by organic processes in current era as population explosion energy and the number of individuals undernourished are raising public concerns. Global warming poses additional threat by lifting the damage of salt stress especially in agro-economically vital crops like maize whose cultivation dates back to Mayans. To that end, cost-effective and organic fungal agents may be great candidates in stress resilience. We isolated the fungal strain from the soil of tea plants and characterized that via 5.8 S rDNA gene with internal transcribed spacer ITS-1 and ITS-2 regions, then named the target strain as TA. Reduced maximum quantum efficiency of PS II (Fv/Fm), the effective quantum yield of PS2 (Phi FPS2), electron transport rate (ETR), photochemical quenching (qP) and increased non-photochemical quenching (NPQ) were detected in maize plants stressed with dose dependent salt. Enhanced Fv/Fm, Phi FPS2, ETR, qP and decreased NPQ was observed in TA primed plus NaCl treated plants. TA biopriming significantly increased the lengths, fresh and dry weights of root/shoots and decreased the lipid peroxidation. Maize seedlings bioprimed with TA had less MDA and higher soluble protein, proline, total chlorophyll, carotenoid and RWC under NaCl. Furthermore, SOD, GPX and GR activities were much more increased in root and leaves of TA primed seedlings, however CAT activity did not significantly change. This is the first report to our knowledge that TA reverses the damage of NaCl stress on maize growth through improving water status, antioxidant machinery and especially photosynthetic capacity.