While in the atmosphere nitrogen is abundant, this element plays a limited role as nutrient for plants. Cereal crops, as an example, are uncapable to directly use freely available nitrogen gas. As a consequence, their optimal growing and, in general, the productivity of such crops relies mainly on the use of chemical fertilizers, which, under the European Green Deal and the Farm to Fork Strategy are under scrutiny with plans of reduction of their use. As increasing crop production is a vital target for agriculture and food systems, the role of nitrogen fixers could play a fundamental role to match the targets of increasing the food production by decreasing the use of chemical fertilizers. Also, such approach is very appropriate from the perspective of sustainable production and conservative agriculture. The present work has the objective to examine the role of nitrogen fixers on the maize yield, respectively the productivity in harvested maize crop treated with Azotobacter chrococcum, Azotobacter vinelandii and Bacillus megaterium, three different nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The investigations were based on field tests. Thus, there at the beginning the seeds were inoculated before seeding; and during the vegetation the crops were treated with the three bacteria species. The fields experiment was organized in four variants (one non-treated variant and three with the bacteria Azotobacter chrococcum, Azotobacter vinelandii and Bacillus megaterium) and three replicates. The examination of collected samples revealed a general increase in productivity in the variants treated with Azotobacter vinelandii.

maize crop, yield, inoculation, Azotobacter chrococcum, Azotobacter vinelandii and Bacillus megaterium.

agronomy

Presentation: poster