Germination and growth of primary roots of inoculated bean (Vicia faba) seeds under different temperatures.

Temperature stress strongly affects legumes, rhizobia, and the efficiency of legumerhizobia interaction. An experiment in 2016 was developed to test the seed germination in Petri dishes using different microorganism inoculation under several temperature treatments (4, 8, 12 and 20 °C). The goal of this study was to test the effect of rhizobium inoculation under low root zone temperature, and to examine whether the addition of mycorrhiza fungi could enhance rhizobia resistance to abiotic stress and improve faba bean (Vicia faba) germination. Four faba bean cultivars were selected for the experiment ('Lielplatone', 'Fuego', 'Bartek' and 'Karmazyn'). Four different seed inoculation variants were included in this experiment - 1) with rhizobium inoculation; 2) with a commercial preparation containing mycorrhiza fungi; 3) inoculation with both rhizobium and the mycorrhiza fungi preparation; 4) control variant. The number of germinated seeds, the length of the primary root and the primary root weight ratio were determined. The effect of inoculation was found out to be dependent not only on the temperature treatment, but it also significantly varied between the bean cultivars. Variants where seeds were inoculated with both mycorrhiza and rhizobia resulted in the highest results (length and weight ratio of primary roots), comparing with other inoculation variants, regardless of temperature. Variants where seeds were treated only with rhizobia mostly showed the lowest results - both length and weight ratio of primary roots, especially under treatment of 4 °C. Faba bean inoculation with only rhizobia might not be efficient, when sowing seeds under a low temperature stress. Inoculation with both rhizobia and mycorrhiza fungi could be a potential solution, when the root zone temperature is still below the optimal temperature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]