A new approach to enhance growth and nodulation of Acacia mangium through aeroponic culture

This work was designed to determine whether a plant culture method on non-solid media could be used as an alternative for inoculation of Acacia mangium with selected strains of Bradyrhizobium spp. A. mangium seedlings were grown and inoculated with Bradyrhizobium strain Aust13c and strain Tel2 in hydroponics, aeroponics and sand. Aeroponics was found to be the best system of the three, allowing the production of tree saplings 1 m in height after only 4 months in culture. Moreover, compared to plants grown in liquid or sand media, aeroponically grown saplings inoculated with Bradyrhizobium spp. developed a very high number of small nodules distributed all along the root system, resulting in an increase in nitrogen and chlorophyll content in plant tissues. We propose aeroponics as an alternative method to classical soil inoculation procedures for the production of hypernodulated legume tree saplings.