Bacillus subtilis NRRL B-30408: A potential inoculant for crops grown under rainfed conditions in the mountains

Abstract

On-farm inoculation trials have been conducted to evaluate the potential of Bacillus subtilis NRRL B-30408 in respect of plant growth promotion, for two consecutive years, under rainfed conditions at a mountain location in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR). For this, one cereal (Oryza sativa) and two millets (Eleusine coracana and Echinochloa frumentacea), were used as test crops. Observations were recorded in terms of plant growth, yield, chlorophyll content, and root colonization by various groups of microorganisms. Positive influence of bacterial inoculation on all the three crops, statistically significant in case of most parameters examined as compared to untreated controls, was recorded in both the years. There was a significant increase in chlorophyll concentration in leaves of inoculated plants. While the bacterial inoculation stimulated the free living bacterial and actinomycetes populations in the rhizosphere, the fungal population was somewhat suppressed; indicative of the antifungal property of the inoculant. The treatment also enhanced the colonization of arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM), and the endophytes associated with the roots. In conclusion, the plant growth promotion, recorded as a result of microbial inoculation, is attributed to the microbial shift in the native microflora of the rhizosphere. Based on the results of this field study, B. subtilis NRRL B-30408 can be proposed as an efficient bioinoculant for the hill crops, grown under rainfed conditions of the mountain ecosystem. The main aim of this study was on farm demonstration of the microbe based technology with peoples' participation, with a view of adoption of the technology by the farmers.

Cold-Tolerant Phosphate-Solubilizing Microorganisms and Agriculture Development in Mountainous Regions of the World

“…In accordance with this, growth promotion abilities of CT Pseudomonas isolates have been demonstrated using a variety of crops such as mung bean , wheat (Egamberdiyeva and Höflich 2003;Mishra et al 2008Mishra et al , 2009aTrivedi and Sa 2008;Selvakumar et al 2009aSelvakumar et al , 2011, maize (Pandey et al 2006b;Kumar et al 2007), rice , and lentil ). Similar results were obtained when using CT Bacillus strains to promote growth of lentil (Rinu and Pandey 2009;Mishra et al 2009b), rice, millet (Malviya et al 2012), and Indian mustard (Kumar et al 2013). In addition to their P-solubilizing activities, some CT-PSB strains have also shown some other interesting properties (Fig.…”

A psychrotolerant strain of Serratia marcescens (MTCC 4822) produces laccase at wide temperature and pH range

“…The microbial diversity of IHR is increasingly gaining attention mainly due to their ecological resilience based applications, such as production of secondary metabolites often higher at suboptimal conditions (Mishra et al 2012; Rinu et al 2012; Yarzábal 2014). Amongst bacteria, species of Bacillus , Pseudomonas and Serratia have been isolated and studied for their various biotechnological applications (Pandey et al 1999, 2001, 2006; Malviya et al 2012; Rinu and Pandey 2009; Selvakumar et al 2008; Trivedi et al 2007; Trivedi and Pandey 2008). Serratia marcescens MTCC 4822, characterized in the present study for its tolerance to low temperature, wide pH and high salt concentration, has been investigated for laccase production- an enzyme of ecological as well as biotechnological relevance.…”

Effect of zn solubilizing bacteria on growth promotion and zn nutrition of rice

“…In previous study, these three bacteria were characterized for Zn solubilization, siderophore, gluconic acid and IAA production (Vaid et al, 2013). Several workers have reported the beneficial effects of different strains of Burkholderia, Acinetobacter, Bacillus, Enterobacter, Alcaligenes, Arthrobacter, Azospirillium, Azotobacter, Beijerinckia, Erwinia, Flavobacterium, Rhizobium and Serratia and also identified them as prominent PGPR's (rodriguez and Fraga, 1999;Sturz and Norwak, 2000;Sahin et al, 2004;Malviya et al, 2012).…”