Supposedly, isolated bacteria were adapted to drought and only
were selected the most abundant and representative bacteria.
Later they were identified by molecular techniques. We tested
whether these autochthonous isolates actually were drought
tolerant bacteria along with a drought-tolerant Bacillus megaterium
strain (Accession CECRIbio 04 similarity 98%) from a culture
collection selected in semiarid zone in previous experiments
(Marulanda et al., 2006, 2009). The autochthonous bacterial
abilities to cope with drought and their functional traits under
osmotic stress conditions were analyzed in the experiment. In a
subsequent bioassay (Section 2.2), we evaluated the effect of these
selected bacteria on the four most representative autochthonous
shrub species growing in a soil under drought conditions. The
treatments used in Section 2.2 were: three autochthonous bacteria
and one from collection were inoculated in presence or absence of
fermented agrowaste in each one of selected shrub. Plants without
fermented agrowaste or bacteria were also assayed as controls.
Each treatment was replicated
five times a total of 50 pots per
plant. The experiment consisted of a factorial block design (5
2)
for each plant with
five inoculations each with and without
fermented agrowaste (total 10 treatments).