Impact of Pink Pigmented Facultative Methylotroph and PGRs on Water Status, Photosynthesis, Proline and NR Activity in Tomato under Drought

Drought is important threat limitations to plant growth and sustainable agriculture worldwide. Droughts have a wide range of effects on the masses in a developing country like India. Drought is major abiotic stress affects germination, growth and productivity of crops. The investigation was aimed to carry out to assess the impact of PPFM (Pink Pigmented Facultative Methylotroph) and PGRs on alleviating the drought stress effects in tomato. Pot culture experiment was carried out in tomato variety PKM 1 and foliar spray different plant growth regulators like brassinolide (1 ppm), salicylic acid (100 ppm), benzyl amino purine (100 ppm) and gibberellic acid (10 ppm) and PPFM (1%), PPFM (2%) and PPFM (3%) under drought condition created based on field capacity of soil. 50 per cent field capacity was maintained throughout the growth period for induction of drought and 100 per cent field capacity maintained as absolute control. The study indicated that the PPFM and PGRs could be effectively improving drought tolerance capacity of tomato crop under drought. Among the PGRs and different concentrations of PPFM used, PPFM (2%) was found to superior in improving RWC, photosynthetic rate, SPAD value and proline content. The anti oxidant enzyme, catalase activity was enhanced by PPFM (2%) and salicylic acid (100 ppm) treatments which has the ability to protect the plant under abiotic stress by nullifying oxidative damage. Foliar spray of salicylic acid (100 ppm) was found effective in improving the NR activity followed by 2 per cent PPFM. The soluble protein content was maintained by brassinolide followed by PPFM (2%) under drought.