The influence of mineral and bacterial fertilization on the number of fungi in soil under maize

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the influence of an application of different rates of mineral fertilizers and their combination with associative N-fixing Klebsiella planticola and Enterobacter spp., and sampling period on the number of fungi in Cambisol and grain yield of maize. The investigation was conducted on Mladenovac experimental station and in the Laboratory of Institute of Soil Science, Belgrade, during 2006. Unfertilized soil was used as the control soil. Each of the studied variants was carried out in three replications. The effect of the studied fertilizers was determined three times during the maize growing season, the number of fungi being determined by indirect dilution method on Czapek nutritive medium. The results of the study showed that all fertilization variants studied influenced, more or less, fungal growth in the study soil. However, the applied high content of mineral nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, as well as their combination with bacterial inoculants brought about the highest increase in the number of fungi during all studied vegetation periods of maize. The highest increase in the number of soil fungi was registered in the second sampling period. The highest increase in the grain yield of maize was obtained by combined application of microbial inoculants and high rates of mineral NPK fertilizers.