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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Plant Symbiotic Interactions
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1451887
This article is part of the Research Topic Use of Biostimulants in Beneficial Plant-Microbe Interactions View all 4 articles

Reduced fertilization supplemented with Bacillus safensis RGM 2450 and Bacillus siamensis RGM 2529 promotes tomato production in a sustainable way

Provisionally accepted
Fabiola Altimira Fabiola Altimira 1Sebastián Godoy Sebastián Godoy 1Matías Arias-Aravena Matías Arias-Aravena 1Nataly Vargas Nataly Vargas 1Erick González Erick González 2Elena Dardón Elena Dardón 2Edgar Montenegro Edgar Montenegro 2Ignacio Viteri Ignacio Viteri 2Eduardo Tapia Eduardo Tapia 3*
  • 1 Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias, INIA La PLatina., Santiago, Santiago Metropolitan Region (RM), Chile
  • 2 Centro de Excelencia Microbiano, Guatemala, Guatemala
  • 3 Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias, Salntiago, Chile

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The rising demand for vegetables has driven the adoption of greenhouse cultivation to guarantee high yields and quality of fresh produce year-round. Consequently, this elevates the demand for fertilizers, whose costs are progressively escalating. Bacillus safensis RGM 2450 and Bacillus siamensis RGM 2529 are plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR). The combination of these strains exhibited synergistic activity in stimulating the growth and seedling hydration of tomatoes. In this study, the effects of inoculation with a RGM 2450 plus RGM 2529 formulation were evaluated under 66% and 100% fertilization programs in tomato crops under greenhouse conditions. Fertilization programs (66% and 100%) with or without commercial biostimulants were used as control treatments. In this assay, the NPK percentage in the plant tissue, tomato average weight, tomato average weight per harvest, tomato diameter, and changes in the colonization, structure, and diversity of the bacterial rhizosphere were measured. The 100% and 66% fertilization programs supplemented with the RGM 2529 plus RGM 2450 formulation increased the average weight of tomatoes per harvest without statistical difference between them, but with the other treatments. The 66% fertilization with RGM 2450 plus RGM 2529 increased between 1.5 and 2.0 times the average weight of tomatoes per harvest compared to the 66% and 100% fertilizations with and without commercial biostimulant treatments, respectively. This study represents the first report demonstrating that the application of a formulation based on a mixture of B. siamensis and B. safensis in a fertilization program reduced by 33% is equivalent in productivity to a conventional fertilization program for tomato cultivation, achieving an increase in potential plant growth-promoting rizobacteria of the genus Flavobacterium. Therefore, the adoption of a combination of these bacterial strains within the framework of a 66% inorganic fertilization program is a sustainable approach to achieving greater tomato production and reducing the environmental risks associated with the use of inorganic fertilization.

    Keywords: Bacillus safensis; Bacillus siamensis, Tomato, Fertilization, plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria, microbiome

    Received: 20 Jun 2024; Accepted: 29 Jul 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Altimira, Godoy, Arias-Aravena, Vargas, González, Dardón, Montenegro, Viteri and Tapia. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Eduardo Tapia, Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias, Salntiago, Chile

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