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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.

Sec. Plant Symbiotic Interactions

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2025.1673790

This article is part of the Research TopicCross-kingdom Interactions In Plants: Understanding The Molecular Dialogue With Fungi, Oomycetes, Bacteria, And Beneficial MicrobesView all articles

Bacillus sp. SW14 Isolated from Arid Mangroves sediments Enhances Tomato Plant Growth: Insights from Genome Analysis and Greenhouse Evaluation

Provisionally accepted
  • 1Khalifa Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (KCGEB), United Arab Emirates University, Al Ain, United Arab Emirates, Al AIN, United Arab Emirates
  • 2United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, United Arab Emirates
  • 3Department of Biology, College of Science, United Arab Emirates University, Al-Ain, Abu Dhabi, UAE, Al AIN, United Arab Emirates
  • 4National Institute of Agricultural Sciences Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Suwon-si, Republic of Korea
  • 5Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Mangroves grow in arid regions with high temperatures, low precipitation, and evaporation. Despite low humidity and high salt concentration, these arid mangroves support diverse microorganisms, including salt-and temperature tolerant. The bacteria isolated from these arid mangroves have potential applications in arid agronomy, which alleviate plant stress and enhance plant growth. In this study, we characterize the genome of previously reported PGP and stress-tolerating bacteria, Bacillus sp. SW14, isolated from mangrove sediments of Umm Al Quwain, United Arab Emirates. Further, we investigated its effects on tomato seed germination and plant growth. Genome size of the strain SW14 is 4.25 MB, with a G+C content of 43.72 %. Genome-based phylogenetic and ANI analyses confirmed strain SW14 as a novel Bacillus sp.. The genome also consists of multiple PGP trait-related genes such as nitrogen fixation (nifSUM), ammonia production (glnAB, ureABCDE), phosphate (pqq, PhoADEHPRU, and pstABCS) and potassium solubilization (kch/mthK, trkAGH and ktrAB), Indole-3-acetic acid (IAA) (trpABCDEFS, iaaT/yedL/ysnE and yhcx) and siderophore (dhbABCEF) production. It also includes genes associated with salt and heat (GrpE, dnaJ, K and groL, S) stress tolerance and bactericidal and fungicidal genes. Greenhouse trial revealed that the inoculation of strain SW14 significantly improved tomato plant growth, increased leaf number (Control (C): 6.82  3.21, Incubated (I): 20.51  11.55), leaf fresh weight (C: 0.11  0.044, I: 0.15  0.0035), leaf surface area (C: 1.823  0.144, I: 15.15  4.13), shoot height (C: 4.56 ± 0.94, I: 10.54 ± 3.44), and average Soil-Plant Analysis Development (SPAD) values (C: 31.01 ± 1.46, I: 33.79 ± 1.68) . Additionally, parameters such as chlorophyll a (C: 2.21 ± 0.84, I: 3.39 ± 0.51), total chlorophyll (a + b) (C: 3.33 ± 1.26, I: 4.91 ± 0.58), carotenoid (C: 0.81 ± 0.29, I: 4.70 ± 0.55) and total chlorophyll to carotenoid (C: 3.81 ± 1.38, I: 9.28 ± 1.28) in tomatoes inoculated with the strain SW14 were increased. In conclusion, Bacillus sp. SW14 is a promising candidate for supporting plant growth in arid agroecosystems since it possesses a variety of PGP genes and the ability to thrive in high temperatures and salinity conditions.

Keywords: mangrove, Arid agricultural, Solanum lycopersicum, Bacillus species, Plant growth-promotingbacteria, Complete genome sequencing

Received: 26 Jul 2025; Accepted: 16 Sep 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Sadaiappan, Ali, Afridi, Khan and Mundra. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Sunil Mundra, sunilmundra@hotmail.com

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