Biofertilizer and Biocontrol Potential of Bacillus Isolates on Tomato Plant Growth

Abstract

Tomato Solanum lycopersicum is an important crop throughout the world and losses result from pathogenic microorganisms. Excessive chemical fertilizers and pesticides are detrimental to environment and human health and need to be replaced by alternatives and biological products which can be sustained. In the greenhouse, nine B. isolates were tested for their biofertilizer and biocontrol potential to growth of tomato plants. Bacterial suspensions were injected into the stems and sprayed onto the leaves of the plants, morphological parameters were measured at 30 and 60 days after inoculation. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was used to statistically compare the root, shoot and fruit parameters in all the treatments and the number of branches and fruits. Highly significant differences were observed between the results obtained for the eight out of nine isolates and the untreated controls in all growth parameters. The isolate B. species (C4PWK-8) was consistently the strongest growth stimulator for all parameters measured. B. thuringiensis (SSG-7) had the lowest activity with comparable results to the control on some parameters. The findings suggest that Bacillus based biofertilizers are an effective and environmentally friendly alternative to chemical fertilizers in tomato production.