Genotypic variation in the response of sweet pepper on seed priming with selected Bacillus and Pseudomonas strains

Abstract

The worldwide increase in human population followed with industrialization led to environmental changes as a result of water, soil and air pollution. It is believed that one way to address this problem is to change the existing agricultural approaches and to use plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) instead of fertilizers and pesticides. The present investigation was aimed to evaluate the influence of PGPB on sweet pepper seed priming. Pepper seeds (Capsicum annuum L.) from six different genotype, 115 and 116 (peppers for spice), 261 (sivri type), 133, 258, and 274 (kapia type) were primed with 10-9 CFU/ml of Bacillus safensis (SS-2.7), B. thuringiensis (SS-29.2), Pseudomonas putida (4.3) and P. protegens CHA0 strains. Seeds were primed during one hour and after three weeks root and seedlings length, and the total mass of the pepper seedlings were analyzed. One and two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Least Significant Difference test (LSD test) with a 0.05 probability level was used for statistical analysis.