Effects of flurenol on soybean (Glycine max L. Merrill) productivity and electrophoretic analysis of seed and root nodule proteins

Recently, numerous studies have been conducted to evaluate the development of soybean crop productivity and the formation of root nodules with respect to the management of nitrogen fertilizers. Objective of this research was to evaluate the effects of flurenol foliar application on the productivity and root nodules formation of soybean (Glycine max L. Merrill) plants and the total protein patterns in seed and root nodules. Soybean (Glycine max L. Merrill) plants cv. Crawford were cultivated in newly reclaimed sandy soil during two growing seasons and treated by foliar application of flurenol at 50, 100 and 200 mg L^-1 at 40 Days after Sowing (DAS). Furthermore, electrophoretic analysis of the seeds and root nodules was conducted to investigate the total protein bands and their similarity using sodium dodecyl sulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) method. Most flurenol treatments resulted in significantly decreased plant height and increased the number of branches. Furthermore, the number of root nodules and the dry weight of the plants significantly increased in response to treatment with 100 mg L^-1 flurenol, with up to 47.67 and 35.67 root nodules and root nodule dry weights of 0.2287 and 0.1777 g being observed in 2006 and 2007, respectively. Evaluation of the root nodule protein patterns revealed a dissimilarity of 33.33% between all flurenol treatments and untreated plants. Based on these results, flurenol treatment at 100 mg L^-1 with inoculating seeds with Bradyrhizobium japonica is recommended to enable the reduction of N fertilizers and increase the yield productivity of soybean cv. Crawford in Egypt.