Researchers at Vegreville, Alta., will soon take growth-promoting bacteria out of the laboratory and into the wheat field.
Inoculating legume crops with a root-colonizing bacteria, or rhizobacteria, is a proven method to increase yields, as well as fix nitrogen into the soil from the air.
Some of the same types of bacteria that cause legumes to fix nitrogen have other potentially profitable effects on cereal plants.
There are no nitrogen-fixing cereals, but bacteria can assist them in several other ways. For example, certain bacteria strains produce auxins, cytokines and other hormones that cause a plant to create more lateral roots and improve the plant’s ability to take in water and nutrients.
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Some strains produce antibiotics that kill harmful bacteria and fungi.
A symbiotic relationship develops when the bacteria that help plants produce large, healthy roots are provided habitat. More roots mean more homes for the healthful bacteria.
More roots also mean plants may be more drought resistant, require less fertilizer or be better able to fight soil pathogens.
The challenge is finding the best bacteria and getting enough live ones in contact with a seedling’s roots.
Anthony Anyia of the Alberta Research Council said after three years of research in this area, he will be ready next spring to take a few promising strains out to the field for testing.
He is testing various bacteria strains from Asia and Africa, but will not identify which are showing the greatest prospects.
“We have seen significant yield improvements in the greenhouse. Now it is time to try it on a larger scale … we are keeping some secrets because we will need commercial partners to take this out to the farmers.”
In greenhouse trials, inoculated Teal spring wheat that had no nitrogen fertilization, other than a minimal level present in the soil, increased its seed yield 34 percent over a control group and had a 40 percent increase in biomass.
“Now we need to begin adding nitrogen at various levels to see what effect the (rhizobacteria) will have and where optimum agronomic levels occur,” Anyia said.
Hani Antoun, a researcher with the University of Laval in Quebec, said study on the effect of root-colonizing bacteria on crops has been limited. He said the research has focused on legumes, and to a lesser extent, on phosphate inoculants for cereals and oilseeds.
Since 1991, farmers have used phosphate inoculant products such as Philom Bios’s JumpStart that is based on the soil fungus Penicillium bilaiae, first isolated in 1981 by a Lethbridge researcher. That product has increased grain yield about eight percent in soils with limited phosphorus.
Antoun said that 30 years ago when he was a grad student, an older gardener would come to his professor’s lab looking for rhizobia to treat his carrot rows.
“He said it helped produce better carrots. We gave it to him and never thought to do any research into the effect on carrots. That may have been a mistake,” he said.
“Now in rice, we see rhizobacteria used to great effect.”
Antoun said he and others are working on inoculants for corn in Quebec, but the effect of the bacteria on cereals like wheat and barley isn’t well studied.
Louise Nelson thinks she might know why. As a microbiologist at the University of Saskatchewan and former fertilizer industry researcher, she said cereal crops provide limited returns which makes the market difficult for new products.
“Farmers also don’t see the effect that pathogens in the soil have on plants,” she said. “Delayed development, seedling deaths attributed to other factors, poor yields. It isn’t like farmers see sick plants with spots on the leaves or head blight. This happens at very small scales and underground.”
Nelson said if the Alberta research pays off, it might allow producers to reduce nitrogen fertilizer use, which would make a new product financially attractive.
“In the long run it would also be more environmentally friendly.”
She said many of these bacteria “look good in the lab,” but in the field many factors can limit the effect of the bacteria or even kill them.
“Then there are Canadian regulatory systems that can drive up costs of development, a concern for all of the inoculant companies,” she said.
Antoun hopes the fact that rhizobacteria are being used now for inoculating legumes and other crops will allow Canadian researchers to continue to share materials between countries and avoid regulatory hurdles faced by other new products.
Anyia said the strains that he is taking to the field have proven stable so far. He plans to test them on multiple varieties of wheat and barley beginning next spring.
His work is being funded by the Alberta Ingenuity Industrial Associateship and the Alberta Research Council.
