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Biocontrol and plant growth-promoting potentiality of bacteria isolated from compost extract

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Abstract

The use of compost extracts is steadily increasing, offering an attractive way for plant growth enhancement and disease management replacing chemical pesticides. In this study, potential mechanisms involved in plant growth promotion and suppressive activity against fungal diseases, of a compost extract produced from poultry manure/olive husk compost, were investigated. Results of physico-chemical and microbiological investigations showed high ability to reduce Fusarium oxysporum, Alternaria alternata, Aspergillus niger and Botrytis cinerea growth. The suppressive ability detected using confrontation test and the phytostimulatory effect tested on tomato seeds were related mainly to its microbial population content. Among 150 bacterial strains, isolated from the compost extract, 13 isolates showed antifungal activity against the four tested plant pathogenic fungi. Their identification based on 16S rRNA gene sequence revealed they belonged to different species of the genus Bacillus, Alcaligenes, Providencia and Ochrobactrum. When tested for their ability to produce cell wall degradation enzymes using specific media, the majority of the 13 isolates were shown to synthesize proteases, lipases and glucanases. Similarly, the best part of them showed positive reaction for plant growth promoting substances liberation, biosurfactant production and biofilm formation. In vivo tests were carried out using tomato seeds and fruits and proved that 92% of strains improved tomato plants vigor indexes when compared to the control and 6 among them were able to reduce decay severity caused by B. cinerea over 50%. Principal component analysis showed an important correlation between in vitro and in vivo potentialities and that Bacillus siamensis CEBZ11 strain was statistically the most effective strain in protecting tomato plants from gray mould disease. This study revealed the selected strains would be useful for plant pathogenic fungi control and plant growth promotion.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Rania Bahloul, University of Sfax-Tunisia, for proofreading the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by grants from the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Biopesticides, Centre of Biotechnology of Sfax, P.B. 1177, 3018, Sfax, Tunisia

    Imen Zouari, Fatma Masmoudi & Slim Tounsi

  2. Laboratory of Environmental Sciences and Sustainable Development (LASED), Sfax Preparatory Engineering Institute, University of Sfax, BP 1172-3018, Sfax, Tunisia

    Khaled Medhioub & Mohamed Trigui

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  1. Imen Zouari
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Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: IZ, MT, ST and KM. Performed the experiments: IZ. Analyzed the data: IZ,MT,ST and FM. Wrote the paper: IZ,FM,MT and ST. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Fatma Masmoudi.

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Zouari, I., Masmoudi, F., Medhioub, K. et al. Biocontrol and plant growth-promoting potentiality of bacteria isolated from compost extract. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 113, 2107–2122 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-020-01481-8

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