Efficient Use of Inoculation with Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi in Improving the Growth and Bunch Quality of Thompson Seedless Grapevines under Water Stress

摘要

This research was carried out for three consecutive seasons (2017, 2018 and 2019) in a privatevineyard located at 58 km on the Cairo-Alexandria desert road; to study the influence of soil inoculation witharbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) under various irrigation water levels (1.0, 0.8 and 0.6 of evapotranspiration(ET)) of Thompson Seedless grapevines in an effort to enhance vegetative growth traits, nutritional status, yieldand bunch quality attributes as well as the activity of microbial and enzyme in the rhizosphere. The selectedvines were twelve years old, grown in a sandy loam soil, irrigated by the drip irrigation system and spacedat 2 X 3 meters apart. The vines were cane-pruned during the first week of January with maintain a load of90 buds/vine and trellised by the Spanish Parron system. The results revealed that all vegetative growth traits,vine nutrient status including leaf content of total chlorophyll and macro-elements, yield and bunch qualityattributes were significantly decreased with increasing water stress and a more prominent effect was evidentfor vines irrigated with 0.6 ET. With respect to the microbial and enzyme activity in the rhizosphere ofThompson Seedless grapevines, it was observed that populations of total microbial count, AMF rootcolonization and dehydrogenase activity in the rhizosphere were also reduced with raising water stress levels.Soil inoculation with AMF significantly reduced the adverse effects of water stress by increasing microbial andenzyme activity in the rhizosphere, which it reflected in improving vegetative growth traits, nutritionalacquisition, yield and fruit quality attributes of Thompson Seedless grapevines during the three seasons of thestudy.