Abstract
Wheat is one of the major cereal crop grown food worldwide and, therefore, plays has a key role in alleviating the global hunger crisis. The effects of drought stress can reduces crop yields by up to 50% globally. The use of drought-tolerant bacteria for biopriming can improve crop yields by countering the negative effects of drought stress on crop plants. Seed biopriming can reinforce the cellular defense responses to stresses via the stress memory mechanism, that its activates the antioxidant system and induces phytohormone production. In the present study, bacterial strains were isolated from rhizospheric soil taken from around the Artemisia plant at Pohang Beach, located near Daegu, in the South Korea Republic of Korea. Seventy-three isolates were screened for their growth-promoting attributes and biochemical characteristics. Among them, the bacterial strain SH-8 was selected preferred based on its plant growth-promoting bacterial traits, which are as follows: abscisic acid (ABA) concentration = 1.08 ± 0.05 ng/mL, phosphate-solubilizing index = 4.14 ± 0.30, and sucrose production = 0.61 ± 0.13 mg/mL. The novel strain SH-8 demonstrated high tolerance oxidative stress. The antioxidant analysis also showed that SH-8 contained significantly higher levels of catalase (CAT), superoxide dismutase (SOD), and ascorbic peroxidase (APX). The present study also quantified and determined the effects of biopriming wheat (Triticum aestivum) seeds with the novel strain SH-8. SH-8 was highly effective in enhancing the drought tolerance of bioprimed seeds; their drought tolerance and germination potential (GP) were increased by up to 20% and 60%, respectively, compared with those in the control group. The lowest level of impact caused by drought stress and the highest germination potential, seed vigor index (SVI), and germination energy (GE) (90%, 2160, and 80%, respectively), were recorded for seeds bioprimed with with SH-8. These results show that SH-8 enhances drought stress tolerance by up to 20%. Our study suggests that the novel rhizospheric bacterium SH-8 (gene accession number OM535901) is a valuable biostimulant that improves drought stress tolerance in wheat plants and has the potential to be used as a biofertilizer under drought conditions.