Journal of Agronomy and Field Innovations

Background: Wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) is one of the foods crucial for ensuring food security worldwide but is faced with changes such as temperature rise, water scarcity, and an increase in COâ‚‚ levels that threaten crop yield stability. Soil microbiome engineering especially with the help of strategically developed synthetic microbial consortia (SMC) may be considered as an innovative approach to enhance crop resistance and lower the requirement for synthetic agrochemicals.
Objective: The study aimed at examining the influence of SMC that contains the nitrogen-fixing, phosphate-dissolving, plant hormone-producing, and arbuscular mycorrhiza functional groups on soil biological characteristics, root structure, plant physiological condition, and wheat grain yield under the field setting as well as under the conditions of simulated climate stress represented by higher temperature, lack of irrigation, and higher concentration of carbon dioxide.
Methods: A two-season split plot field trial was conducted to compare untreated control plots with SMC-treated plots under the two climate scenarios in terms of soil enzyme activities, microbial biomass carbon, bacterial diversity indices, root and shoot growth parameters, nutrient- and water-use efficiency and grain yield.
Results: SMC application produced more microbial biomass carbon and bacterial Shannon diversity as compared to controls for both climate regimes, increased dehydrogenase and urease activity, and led to improvements in nitrogen and phosphorus availability, root length and biomass, and relative water content. Also, grain yield was enhanced by 23% in ambient conditions and by about 40% in climate-stress conditions compared to non-treated controls and this improvement was revealed by the increase of nitrogen-use efficiency and water-use efficiency. According to soil organic carbon and enzyme activities, we can say that the carbon sequestration potential is increasing.
Significance: These results indicate that synthetic microbial consortia may reduce some losses of wheat productivity due to climate-driven abiotic stress, while simultaneously enhancing measures of soil biological health.
Conclusion: Soil microbiome engineering via SMC is a scientifically-sound and resource-efficient approach that warrants further validation at field scale as part of climate-smart wheat production systems.