School of Earth, Environmental, & Marine Sciences Faculty Publications
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-4-2026
Abstract
A field experiment was conducted at the Agronomy Field Laboratory of Bangladesh Agricultural University to evaluate the effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) inoculation and foliar supplementation of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) on the performance of maize (Zea mays L.) under irrigated and rainfed conditions. The experiment followed a randomised complete block design with two levels of AMF (inoculated and non-inoculated) and four foliar treatments (no N and P, N only, P only, and combined N + P). The recommended dose of fertiliser (RDF) was applied as a soil application to all treatments. AMF inoculation significantly increased grain yield by 8.1% under rainfed and 10.0% under irrigated conditions compared with non-inoculated plants. Foliar application of N and P, especially when they were applied together, significantly improved yield components, including cob length, number of grains per cob, and 1000-grain weight. The highest grain yield (9.08 t ha−1 under rainfed and 10.91 t ha−1 under irrigated conditions) was obtained from the combined treatment of AMF inoculation and foliar N + P application. Redundancy analysis (RDA) and linear mixed-effects modelling (LMM) confirmed that water availability was the dominant factor controlling maize productivity, while AMF inoculation exhibited a stronger independent effect than foliar fertilisation. Under rainfed conditions, the treatment responses were reduced, and maize responded better to foliar N application in combination with AMF than combined N + P application. These findings indicate that the integrated use of AMF and foliar nutrient management enhances maize productivity, but optimal combinations depend strongly on moisture regimes.
Recommended Citation
Lailatul Ferdows, Mst., Saima Biswas, Mizanur Rahman, F. M. Jamil Uddin, Md. Nayan, Aporna Tabassum Api, Mohaiminul Islam, Nadia Islam, Swapan Kumar Paul, and Md. Harun Rashid. 2026. "Synergistic Effects of Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi and Foliar Nitrogen–Phosphorus Application on Maize Productivity Under Irrigated and Rainfed Conditions" International Journal of Plant Biology 17, no. 7: 54. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijpb17070054
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
DOI
10.3390/ijpb17070054
Comments
© 2026 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.