Endophytic Bacterial Isolates Improve the Growth of Chili Seedlings (<i>Capsicum annum</i>) as A Support towards Sustainable Agriculture

Several studies have shown the role of endophytic bacteria in enhancing plant growth. This is partly because these bacteria produce Indole Acetic Acid (IAA). Previous research had isolated endophytic bacteria encoded by K2 and K8, which produced IAA of 73.50 and 59.5 ppm respectively. These isolates have been inoculated into the rice and maize (monocot) plants and tomato (dicot) plants. Interestingly, K2 and K8 improve the growth of tomato plants but not rice and maize plants. Therefore, this experiment aimed to determine the potential benefits of endophytic bacteria to support the expansion of chili (Capsicum annum) seedlings which are dicot plants. This research is an experimental study following a 2-factor completely randomized design. Endophytic bacterial inoculation uses the root inoculation method. Chili seeds are soaked for 30 minutes with endophytic bacteria isolated and then sowing in sterile soil media. The measured parameters in this study were plant height, roots number, leaves count, root length and fresh weight. The data were evaluated at a five percent significance level of t-test. This study found that endophytic bacteria isolates K2 and K8 were proven to significantly improve chili seedlings’ growths compared to the control. The endophytic bacteria K2 isolate significantly increased plant height, while the endophyte K8 isolate significantly increased plant height, leaves, and root growths. This research contributes to information about the potential of endophytic bacteria to improve the dicotyl plants such as chili plants.