Iron Chelate and Rhizobactria Changed Growth, Grain Yield, and Physiological Characteristics in Maize

Abstract In order to investigate the effect of iron chelate and plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) on maize, an experiment was conducted as completely randomized block factorial design with three replicates. The first factor included of bacterial strain: S1= Control (without use of bacteria), S2=Azotobacter chroococcum and S3= Azospirillum brasilens and the second factor included of iron chelate: F1= Control, F2= soil application of Fe chelate, F3= foliar application of Fe chelate, F4= soil application of nano Fe chelate and F5= foliar application of nano Fe chelate. The results showed that the highest grain yield and guaiacol peroxidase (GPX) enzymes activity were obtained at the S3F5 treatment and ascorbate peroxidase (APX) at S1F5 treatment. Except the content of phosphorus in leaves and carotenoid, PGPR had significant effect on biological yield, the content of chlorophyll ‘a’ and ‘b’, yield components (number of seed per row of the ear, number of rows per ear and thousand seed weight) and nutrient elements in both the seeds and leaves. However, iron chelate, increased the yield components, but among the iron chelate treatments, the highest amount of chlorophyll ‘a’ and ‘b’ in leaves and phosphorus in seeds were obtained at F5. These results suggested that foliar application of nano Fe chelate and Azospirillum brasilens could be improvement of maize plant productivity.