Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci (2020) 9(11): 2606-2613

International Journal of Current Microbiology and Applied Sciences ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 9 Number 11 (2020) Journal homepage: http://www.ijcmas.com

Review Article https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2020.911.315

The Effect of on Growth and Yield of Legumes – A Review

Hardika Kaushal1* and Sarvjeet Kukreja2

1Department of Agronomy, School of Agriculture, Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, Punjab 144411, India 2 Lovely Professional University, Jalandhar, Punjab 144411, India

*Corresponding author

ABSTRACT

K e yw or ds

Biofertilizers, Legume crops are important because of its market and nutritional value. Rhizobium, They have the ability to fix the atmospheric nitrogen. If a legume is sown in Phosphate the field it can provide nitrogen for the successive crop because of the Solubilising Bacteria, amount of nitrogen it fixes during its growth. Due to excessive use of the Azotobacter, chemical the microbial population can decline in the soil. These Azospirillum, microbes are important for converting the unavailable form of into Mycorrhiza available form. Biofertilizers contain these beneficial micro-organisms

Article Info which are applied to the seed or to the soil. These micro-organisms then form association with the and helps changing the organic form into Accepted: 20 October 2020 inorganic form of nutrient. This is a sustainable method and can also help Available Online: improve soil quality. 10 November 2020

Introduction dependence on chemical fertilizers has increased due to increase in food demand as a In the modern era of agriculture, the use of result of increased population. The pressure to chemical fertilizers has increased feed billions of people and meeting the food tremendously over the period of time. demand encouraged the use of chemical Farmers were drawn to chemical fertilizers due to its rapid release nature and as because the release of was faster it was easily available. The excessive uses of than the traditional manures and were cheaper chemical fertilizers in agriculture are costly comparatively. During the Green revolution, with adverse effects on physico-chemical in India use of chemical fertilizers was properties of soils (Ghany et al., 2013). The promoted to increase the yield of crops. Using uses of chemical fertilizers have some major chemical fertilizers showed positive effects disadvantages such as toxic residual effect. and the production of crop was increased. The The chemical fertilizer produces toxic

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residual substances which alters the health of toxic substances can accumulate in the crop the soil. The micro organisms living in soil produced which affects human health. One which also affect the life and are major disadvantage is eutrophication and beneficial to the plants are also killed due to which leads to water pollution. The long term high amount of fertilizers. The indiscriminate use of chemical fertilizers can deplete the soil use of synthetic fertilizer has led to the off nutrient. There are numerous pollution and contamination of the soil, has disadvantages of chemical fertilizer as the soil polluted water basins, destroyed micro can take really long to replenish and attain its organisms and friendly insects, which makes natural form. Soil need to be fit as it is most the crop more prone to diseases and reduces important factor for growth of plant. Due to (Mishra et al., 2012). The the decrease in soil quality farmers have absence of soil micro-organism affects the started using alternate substances such as growth of the plant as these microorganisms biofertilzers which provide right amount of play a vital role in nutrient cycles such as nutrients and are eco-friendly. nitrogen cycle, Bacteria such as nitrobacter and nitrazomonas helps in mineralization of Biofertilizers nitrogen which is necessary for uptake of nitrogen by plant. Addition of acidic Biofertilizers consist of microorganisms fertilizers in high doses can affect the soil pH. which can supply adequate nutrient to the Increased soil pH affects the growth of the plants and does not deteriorate the quality of plant and decrease the crop yield due to the soil. They are also known as microbial stunted growth and poor plant vigour. It inoculants. Biofertilizers can mobilise the causes soil pollution because it amends its nutrient present in the soil and make it physical, biological and chemical available for uptake by plant through characteristics. Soil health is compromised biological process. Biofertilizers are used due to excessive use of chemical fertilizers. extensively as an eco friendly approach to Chemical fertilizers can also cause global minimize then use of chemical fertilizers, warming as they can produce green house improve soil fertility status and for gases. Chemical fertilizers can also cause enhancement of crop production by their nutrient toxicity as farmers can apply biological activity in the rhizosphere in last fertilizers more than required and this causes one decade (Selvakumar et al., 2009). The increase of particular nutrient which causes biofertilizers are the preparation which the toxicity. This can hinder the uptake of contains live or latent cell of different strains other nutrients in plant and causes various of micro organism. These organisms are toxicity and deficiency symptoms in plant. found in nature. They are produced on a large These toxicity symptoms can include scale for commercial production and sold in chlorosis and necrosis. In chlorosis, yellow the market. Their production requires colouration occurs in leaves and in necrosis technical assistance as micro organism the death of the plant tissue, can occur both of requires favourable environment to grow. these can adversely affect the growth of the Biofertilizers are either applied on the seed or plant. The prolonged use of chemical in soil. Biofertilizers may be classified as fertilizers can also cause the compaction of carrier based inoculants fixing atmospheric soil as they seep to the subsoil and form hard nitrogen or by stimulating plant growth pan by interacting with clay. Ultimately the through synthesis of growth promoting quality of the food produced is degraded as substances (Asad et al., 2004). They play a the essential mineral and vitamin are less and very important role in vigorous growth of the

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plant and enhancing the soil fertility. rotation. As legumes are deep rooted crops so Biofertilizers offer a cheaper low capital they can make available the nutrients present intensive and eco friendly route to boosting at lower level and can also fix the farm productivity depending upon their atmospheric nitrogen by symbiotic activity of mobilizing different nutrients association with Rhizobium bacteria. One of (Koushal et al., 2011). Micro organism play the most important pulse crops is mungbean; an important role in mobilizing the nutrients it has the potential to enrich soil through present in the soil as nutrients in the soil are atmospheric nitrogen fixation and can also present in mineral form. But due to loss in minimize the scarcity of fodder because the quality of the soil, the number of micro whole plant or its by-products can be used as organism becomes less in the soil. (Pramanik good animal feed (Rana et al., 2011). These et al., 2012) revealed that inoculation of crops can be also used for green manuring biofertilizers significantly improved growth which can help improve the soil productivity. parameters like plant height yield parameters In India, pulses accounts for a large part of like number of pods per plant, weight of pods export and provide good financial gains. The per plant, number of gains per plant, test total amount of protein present in the pulses is weight, grain yield, stalk yield and harvest 20 to 25 percent by weight. Pulses are one of index. The main role of the biofertilizers is to the important segments of Indian agriculture mobilize the nutrients present in the soil as after cereals and oil seeds with 33 percent of they contain those microorganisms. Most the world’s area and 22 percent of the importantly the use of biofertilizers is a production (Kant et al., 2016). sustainable way of achieving the desired production as these does not harm available Rhizobium resources. The quality of soil is well maintained by the use of biofertilizers. They Rhizobium is a nitrogen fixing bacteria. The can increase the yield up to 30 percent. symbiotic association between Rhizobium and Biofertilizers also helps to develop a strong roots of legume plants leads to the fixation of root system and overall growth of the plant is the nitrogen. Nitrogen is considered better. It helps plant to thrive under important. unfavourable condition and the plants can live longer. They are cost effective and the price For plant growth and termed as a macro of biofertilizers is less when compared to the nutrient because plant requires it in a large chemical fertilizer so farmers can easily buy quantity. them. They can also help reduce shock during transplantation as this is a major issue. Rhizobia play an important role in reducing Moreover use of biofertilizers is cheap and molecular nitrogen into ammonia this process really effective and can increase the farm is known as nitrogen fixation (Htwe et al., income. 2019). Rhizobium fixes 50 – 100 kg nitrogen per hectare so it is agronomically important as Why legume crops it reduces the use of chemical fertilizer. It belongs to Rhizobiaceace family. It is mainly Legumes are considered to be the cheapest applied to the seed of the legume crop before source of protein. They are an important cash sowing. It is a gram negative and motile crop and are integral part of the vegetarian bacterium with non sporulating rods. For diet. They play a very important role in expression of the nitrogen fixing genes organic farming as they are used in crop present in Rhizobium it requires a host plant

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as it cannot fix nitrogen independently. The known for the energy transfer. It is constituent symbiotic relation of the legume and of majority enzymes, nucleic acid, Adenosine Rhizobium is facultative as both species triphosphate, nicotinamide adenine derive benefit from each other but not being dinucleotide phosphate. It stimulates early fully dependant and can survive without each growth of root and helps the seedling to other and this relation is mainly initiated by establish. It also helps promoting seed and starvation of host plant. Different strain of fruit formation. It also enhances the Rhizobium is required for different legume nodulation and nitrogen fixation by legumes. crop as for successful nodulation a compatible Phosphorous also promotes nutrient use strain of the bacteria is required. Nodules are efficiency and helps in efficient portioning of formed after the bacteria colonize forms a photosynthates between source and sink. tumour like structure, which helps in Source being the leaves where ammonia production. It can be used for pulses is performed and sink where the like red gram, black gram, soybean, chickpea, photosynthates are transferred so it helps in pea, lentil, etc. Use of biofertilzer with some biomass production. Phosphorous is an other organic amendment can reduce the use important macro nutrient and plays a vital role of chemical fertilizer and can restore the in metabolism of the plant. Phosphate quality of the soil. (Fatima et al., 2007) solubilising bacteria is used to solubilise the concluded that increase in soybean yield can organic form of phosphate in available form be achieved by applying Rhizobium mixed by acidification, chelate the cations bound to culture with phosphorous, which also phosphate, and production of gluconic acid improves soil fertility for sustainable and exchange reaction. There are different agriculture. Application of the proper strain of strains of phosphate solubilising bacteria the Rhizobium resulted in increased present. Most of the PSB strains can improve nodulation, acquisition of the nitrogen and the root and shoot growth in a pulse if increased yield. (Giri et al., 2010) obtained compared to chemical fertilizer (Vikram et that, the bacterized seeds showed, 14.06 al., 2008). Phosphate solubilising bacteria can percent in total length over control, increase be abundantly found in soil and the of 10.83 percent in total weight over control rhizosphere. These can contain aerobic and and an increase of 9 percent on germination anaerobic strains of the bacteria. Inoculation over control. (Tahir et al., 2009) revealed that of the phosphate solubilising bacteria can application of Rhizobium alone or in improve the yield of the crop and also combination with Phosphorous and Nitrogen increase uptake of phosphorous in the plant. increased nodulation in soybean. Use of Phosphatic fertilizers are expensive and their Rhizobium can help decrease the demand is higher than their supply (Budd et environmental population caused due to al., 2013). The availability of phosphorous excessive use of chemical fertilizer. increases in the soil by applying phosphate solubilising bacteria. Phosphate solubilising Phosphate solubilising bacteria bacteria can save up to 50 percent of crop requirement of phosphatic fertilizer. Phosphorous is known as the master key Pseudomonas and microbacterium strains are element in crop production. It plays an found highly efficient phosphate solubilizer. important role in pulses in root proliferation. Singh et al., (2018) resulted that application The nutrient content and crop production is of phosphorous at 60 kg per hectare, sulphur greatly influenced by application of right at 20 kg per hectare and seed inoculation with level of phosphorous. Phosphorous is greatly Phosphate solubilising bacteria and

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Rhizobium significantly increased the growth, brasilense on soybean had great effect on dry weight, number of nodules per plant and growth and nodulation, and grains harvested yields of chickpea over the control. (Singh et had higher nitrogen and protein content. After al., 2015) concluded that inoculation of the association with the plant some Rhizobium and Phosphate solubilising biochemical changes occur in the roots, which bacteria along with 20 kg P2O5 may be promote plant growth and drought tolerance. recommended for better performance in In legume crop the application of summer mungbean. Abundance of phosphate Azospirillum is done with other solubilising bacteria in the rhizoshpere such as Rhizobium to increase the growth and enhances the bio availability of phosphate to yield of the crop. (Burdman et al., 1996) the crops, it provide stimulated shoot and root revealed that field inoculation with growth and also increases their length, and Azospirillum brasilense strain C increased enhance fresh an dry weight of the shoot. nodule dry weight (90%), plant growth There is a significant enhancement in dry parameters and seed yield (99%) and matter and grain yield. combined inoculation with Rhizobium and Azospirillum resulted in a further increase Azospirillum (23%) in chickpea.

It is a gram negative to gram variable Azotobacter bacteria, heterotropic and associative in nature and is curved rod shaped and motile Azotobacter is a free living, aerobic, gram bacteria. They have nitrogen fixing ability of negative, motile bacteria which is about 20 to 40 kg per hectare. Most widely heterotrophic in nature. They are capable of used Azospirillum strain is Azospirillum fixing atmospheric nitrogen at an average of brasilense and A.lipoferum. They have the 20 kg per hectare. They are oval or spherical ability to form an associative symbiosis with and pleomorphic, they form a thick walled many plants. It belongs to the family cysts and may produce slime in large spirilaceae. It has been reported that quantities. These bacteria can produce anti Azospirillum brasilense have the ability to fungal antibiotics which can inhibit the restrict proliferation of other non pathogenic growth of the several pathogenic fungi. (Ara bacteria present in the rhizosphere this et al., 2009) indicated that combine effect of antibacterial activity can be due to its ability BradyRhizobium and Azotobacter to produce bacteriocins and siderophores. significantly increased nodulation, root and Azospirillum can synthesis phytohormones shoot weights at 35 days after sowing, and can perform nitrogen fixation and nitrate number of seeds per pod and seed yield were reductase activity and also enhance the also increased in mungbean. Azotobacter mineral uptake. (Burdman et al., 1996) population can be affected by soil physical, showed that Azospirillum brasilense Cd chemical and microbiological properties. inoculation promoted root hair formation in (Dashadi et al., 2011) showed that co seedling roots and significantly increased total inoculation of Rhizobium and Azotobacter and upper nodule numbers at different increased total nitrogen content, nodulation, concentration of Rhizobium inoculums. seed yield and biological yield under water Azospirillum also caused an increase in the deficit condition. They can increase crop secretion of nod gene inducing flavanoids in productivity. In legumes there significant Phaseolus vulgaris. (Puente et al., 2019) affect can be seen when applied with other revealed that foliar application of A. biofertilizer.

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Mycorrhiza can be used as an alternative to chemical fertilizers. There is significant effect of Mycorrhiza is a symbiotic association Biofertilizers on growth, nodulation, nitrogen between the roots of plant and fungal hyphae fixation and yield of legume plants. As the which is a non pathogenic relationship and efficiency of phosphate fertilizers is very low, connection between the soil and root. In this inoculation with phosphate solubilising symbiotic relationship, the fungi obtain bacteria can help in mobilisation of nutrients. carbon compounds and other nutritional Rhizobium proficiently increases number of requirements from the plant roots, and in nodules and nitrogen fixation in legumes. return it provides plant with the most of the Biofertilizers have the ability to increase the mineral element which are immobile such as productivity of the crop in a sustainable way. Nitrogen, Phosphorous, Potassium, Calcium, Copper and Zinc from the soil solution, so its References becomes a significant component in low- input agricultural systems. Vesicular Abdel Ghany, T.M., M.M. Alawlaqi and arbuscular mycorrhiza is an Endomycorrhiza M.A. Al Abboud (2013). Role of as is penetrates deep in plant cells providing biofertilizers in agriculture: a brief dome special structures as a mean of nutrient review. Mycopath, 11(2): 95-101. exchange and used as a biofertilizer. Aung Zaw Htwe, Seinn Moh Moh, Khin Myat Arbuscular Mycorrhiza is zygomycetes Soe, Kyi Moe and Takeo Yamakawa belonging to the order Glomales. It is known (2019). Effects of Biofertilizer that the nitrogen fixing ability of Rhizobium Produced from BradyRhizobium and may enhance if the plant is also in a symbiotic Streptomyces griseoflavus on Plant relationship with arbuscular Mycorrhizae Growth, Nodulation, Nitrogen Fixation, (Mohammadi et al., 2011). (Farrzaneh et al., Nutrient Uptake, and Seed Yield of 2011) generalised that across their trial period Mung Bean, Cowpea, and Soybean. of two years that concentration P Agronomy 2019, 9, 77; concentration was higher in chickpea than the doi:10.3390/agronomy9020077. control plants. (Djebali et al., 2010) observed Dashadi, M., H. Khosravi, A. Moezzi, H. that at species level there as a positive effect Nadian, M. Heidari and R. Radjabi of inoculation. There was a notable increase (2011). Co-Inoculation of Rhizobium of shoot fresh weight, number of nodules and and Azotobacter on Growth of Faba root dry weight was observed in bean, pea and bean under Water Deficit Conditions. alfalfa and most positive effect in medicago American-Eurasian J. Agric. & Environ. line, which showed an increase in shoot and Sci., 11 (3): 314-319. root dry weights, in nodule and pod numbers, Djébali, N., S. Turki, M. Zid and M. R. and an early blooming. Mycorrhizae show a Hajlaoui (2010). Growth and positive effect on root growth of the plant development responses of some legume which results in overall growth of legume species inoculated with a mycorrhiza- plant. based biofertilizer. Agriculture and Biology Journal of North America. In conclusion, biofertilizers are important tool Print: 2151-7517. of organic farming. Biofertilizers are proven Farrzaneh, M., H. Vierheilig, A. Losssh and to be effective in increasing the soil fertility H.P. Kaul (2011). Arbuscular without harming the health of the soil. They mycorrhiza enhances nutrient uptake in provide beneficial nutrients to the plant and chichpea. Plant Soil Envron., 57, (10):

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How to cite this article:

Hardika Kaushal and Sarvjeet Kukreja. 2020. The Effect of Biofertilizers on Growth and Yield of Legumes – A Review. Int.J.Curr.Microbiol.App.Sci. 9(11): 2606-2613. doi: https://doi.org/10.20546/ijcmas.2020.911.315

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