Preliminary study of the effect of bacterial inoculation on the response of Lycium species under saline condition.

The objective of the work is to evaluate the role of identified and selected bacteria, collected in the Minqin desert in the Northwest of China, in the adaptation to water deficit and soil salinity of 2 Lycium spcies. Soil rhizosphere samples were taken from Lycium chinense (LC) in 2016, and cultivable bacteria were grown on rich medium and bacteria genomic DNA was extracted. The 16S rDNA were sequenced (MiSeq Illumina) and, using a bioinformatic analysis, the composition of cultivated bacteria was obtained . The alignment in the bacteria ribosomal DNA database gives, in descending order, Serratia (33.7%), Arthtrobacter (19.9%), Staphylococcus (17.7%), Pseudomonas (8%) and Bacillus (6%). This bacteria mixture was used to inoculate (I) 6 times, during the growth cycle, the LC and Lycium barbarum (LB) plants cultivated under salt and water stress conditions. Two irrigation treatments were applied: Tc (non saline water); Ts (saline water ECw= 6 dS m-1). Irrigation was applied when the control treatment reached the wilting point (?1.6MPa) to restore all treatments to 0.03 MPa. A control treatment without bacteria inoculation (NI) was applied for both plants, i.e. the treatments were: ILCTs; NILCTs; ILCTc; NILCTc; ILBTs; NILBTs; ILBTc; NILBTc. The bacteria had a modest significant effect on: leaf area, biomass, water use efficiency and on stem biomass. The significant effects of bacteria are more evident on LB than on LC. Future steps is to test such bacteria on other crops and investigate the possible gene expressions switched on by the bacteria.