The role of halotolerant N-fixing bacteria on rice agronomic traits on saline soils by path analysis

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria (NFB) play a significant role in saline soil ecosystems. However, little is known about the correlation between NFB application on growth and yield components of rice plants on saline soils. Explo-ration and experimental methods were performed to obtain the potential of NFB from a rice field in saline soil and reinoculated in a pot experiment. The experiment was arranged as a randomised block design consisting of 8 treat-ments, namely inoculation application (control and seed treatments with 20 g inoculant/kg of seed) combined with soil application dosage (0, 500, 1 000 and 1 500 g/ha). The results showed that grain yield increased by 43.8-130.6% with seed treatment of 20 g inoculant/kg of seed combined with soil application 500-1 500 g inoculant/ha. Rice yield was affected by multiple variables NFB population, plant height, number of tillers, and grain straw ratio (R2 = 0.926). Path analysis findings showed that the greatest effective contribution (45.45%) yield of rice in saline soil was contributed NFB population. This finding concludes that the application of NFB inoculants as seed treatments and soil applications can serve as an effective as well as the environmentally friendly microbial-based strategy of rice cultivation on saline soil ecosystems.