Biofertilizer application

On-farm experiments were conducted in 2018 and 2019 to investigate the effect of PGPR inoculation and cover cropping on soil parameters and date palm nutrition, yield and yield quality parameters. The following four treatments were compared:

1. a control without any special treatment;
2. PGPR inoculation using a cocktail of four PGPR strains with contrasting plant growth promotion traits;
3. cover cropping: cultivation of a crop rotation composed of sorghum, barley and maize around the tree, with subsequent incorporation of the whole cover crop biomass into the soil. The crops in the rotation are so-called „nurse plants“ because they were shown to promote the propagation of native AMF communities in the soil, and
4. the combination of PGPR inoculation and cover cropping.