Phyllospheric Bacterial Treatments Improve Growth in Helianthus annuus L.

Abstract

The current study focuses on the effect of variation in time of bacterial treatment during different growth phases of seeds on plant growth improvement using Helianthus annuus L. For this purpose, two phyllospheric auxin-producing bacterial strains Bacillus thuringiensis (E4) and Lysinobacillus fusiformis (E6) were used for bacterial treatment. Two experiments were conducted in the present work with pre-germination and post-germination inoculation treatments to seeds. A comparative analysis was made in order to find out the efficiency of Bacillus thuringiensis (E4) and Lysinobacillus fusiformis (E6) for improving growth of Helianthus annuus L. Post-germination treatments were found effective with Bacillus thuringiensis (E4) but Lysinobacillus fusiformis (E6) worked well in both treatments i.e., in pre-germination and in post-germination inoculation treatment.