Effectiveness of gypsum application and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi inoculation on ameliorating saline-sodic soil characteristics and their productivity.

HE DEGRADATION of soil characteristics caused by salinity and sodicity gives rise to severe limitations on crop production. Therefore, the current study was conducted in a split block design with three replicates during the winter (2019/2020) and summer (2020) seasons at Sakha Agriculture Research Station Farm, Kafr El-Sheikh Gov., Egypt to study the integrated effect of gypsum with mycorrhizae fungi inoculation to improve saline-sodic soil properties and bacterial communities, physiological and productivity of wheat and maize plants. The treatments included different soil gypsum levels (G 0 : none, G 1 : 7.5 Mg ha -1 , and G 2 : 10 Mg ha -1 ) of the requirements and mycorrhizal fungi inoculation (without inoculation AMF 0 and inoculated AMF 1 ). The results showed that the combination of G 2 + AMF 1 caused significant changes in the photosynthetic activity, antioxidant enzyme activities (catalase, peroxidase and superoxide dismutase), mycorrhizal root colonization, total bacterial counts, P solubilizer bacteria, and respiration of microbial soil in the Rhizosphere of wheat and maize. In addition, after two growing seasons, electrical conductivity (EC) decreased from 7.09 to 4.57 dS m -1 , exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP) from 19.35 to 15.47 and soil bulk density (BD) from 1.38 to 1.31 Mg m -3 . While the exchangeable calcium percentage (ECaP) increased from 11.51 to 15.47, available phosphorus (Av. P) from 8.19 to 11.17 mg kg -1 , infiltration rate (IR) from 0.7 to 0.97 cm hr -1 , and total porosity (TP) from 47.92 to 50.44 % and G 2 + AMF 1 treatment gave the highest grain yield of wheat and maize were 7.72 and 8.52 Mg ha -1 , respectively. Current findings concluded that the incorporation of gypsum application with AMF inoculation could be applied as an effective way of ameliorating saline-sodic soil characteristics and alleviating the hazardous effects of soil salinity and sodicity on wheat and maize plants.