3. Results
The bacterial endophytes P. fluorescens YsS6 (YsS6WT), P. migulae 8R6 (8R6WT), and their corresponding ACC deaminase deficient mutants (YsS6M and 8R6M) were tested for their capacity to facilitate plant growth under salt stress.
Bacterial treatments were given at the seed level whereas seeds treated with 0.03 M MgSO4 only served as a control.
Seeds treated with the wild-type bacterial endophytes exhibited higher growth than the controltreated plants while ACC deaminase deficient mutant-inoculated plants displayed significantly lower growth than the ones that were inoculated with the wild-type strains (Fig. 1a and b, Table 1), and are more like the control (Fig. 2).
Wild-type strain-inoculated plants tended to prevent salt built-up in plant tissues, and more salt was deposited per gram of dry biomass in the plants inoculated with the mutant strains (Fig. 1c, Table 1).