Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria Reduces Drought Stress and Improve Molecular and Biochemical Response in the Garden Thyme

Abstract

Abiotic stresses such as water-deficient are the most important factor that could impress the agricultural process causing a reduction of crop yield. Use of Bio-fertilizers could improve growth condition of drought stressed plant to reduce the damage of water deficit. The objective of this work is to assay comparative effect of some organic and non-organic fertilizers on the flowering branches essential and some antioxidant activity (APX, PO, CAT), then expression analysis of two thymus and carvacrol bio-synthesis related genes(CYP171 d178 and CYP171D180 ) in Thymus vulgaris under water deficit stress in a field trial was investigated using qRT-PCR method. The treatments were arranged in a completely randomized design with a total of 42 experimental separate blocks. The highest and lowest yield of flowering branches was observed in NPK and mycorrhizae treatments Approximately, Azospirillum bio-fertilizer showed high effect on enzyme activity in treated plants. Unlike, chemical fertilizer showed minimum efficiency on enzyme activity. A high expression level (approximately, 6-fold change) of both genes was observed in treated plants with Azospirillum bio-fertilizer while the lowest expression level (1.3-fold change) was observed in chemical fertilizer application when compared to other fertilizers. According to the obtained results of this work, we conclude that yearly fertilizer application could have a significant effect on molecular and biochemical traits and resulted in increase of yield component via decrease of drought stress.