Effects of the interactions between a cover crop and a microbial inoculant on rice growth and yield in an organic paddy field
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The experiments were conducted in an organically cultivated rice field in 2021 and 2022 to investigate the effects of applying Italian ryegrass as a cover crop in combination with the microbial inoculant ‘Inefaita’ (IF), which contains an endophytic bacterium belonging to genus Azospirillum as plant growth-promoting bacteria. The rice field was subjected to four treatments: cover crop incorporated treatment without IF inoculation (CC), cover crop incorporated treatment with IF inoculation (CC/IF), fallow treatment without IF inoculation (FA), and fallow treatment with IF inoculation (FA/IF). To characterize the structure of microbial communities in rice root-associated soil under the CC and FA treatments (excluding CC/IF and FA/IF), meta amplicon – sequencing based on the prokaryotic 16S rRNA gene was performed. The relative abundance of the dominant phyla in the bacteria was: Proteobacteria (CC 36.6%, FA 33.6%) and Acidobacteria (CC 19.5%, FA 19.7%). This content of Proteobacteria was significantly higher in the CC than in the FA group. There was no significant difference in the relative abundance of the dominant archaeal phyla Nanoarchaeota (CC 50.8%, FA 54.1%) and Crenarchaeota (CC 38.0%, FA 33.3%) between CC and FA. These results indicate that prokaryotic communities in the rice field may be affected by CC management. Additionally, the ANOVA revealed no significant positive effects of CC on rice yield, while IF inoculation had a significant positive effect on yield. Furthermore, there were significant interactions between CC and IF on spikelet number and yield. The CC/IF yield was 4.1% higher than that of the CC in 2021 and 5.9% lower in 2022, whereas that of the FA/IF was 42.5% higher than that of FA in 2021 and 12.1% higher in 2022. Therefore, a positive effect of IF inoculation on yield was observed in FA. Although CC application affected the structure of soil microbial communities, its combination with IF inoculation did not increase rice yield.
Source: Figshare
Authors: Kaku, Takatoki, Takashima, Naoya, Mutoh, Koki, Sugai, Jun, Sakoda, Midori, Nishizawa, Tomoyasu, Isawa, Tsuyoshi, Asagi, Naomi, Komatsuzaki, Masakazu
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W6921031808
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