A b s t r a c tA total of 66 actinomycetes isolates were isolated from mangroves of Andhra Pradesh, India, using various enrichment techniques and pre treatments. The samples were collected from Coringa mangrove ecosystem and pretreated by enrichment with CaCO 3 , sodium dodecyl sulphate and phenol, plated on the media supplemented with cycloheximide (50 mg/ml), nystatin (25 mg/ml) and nalidixic acid (50 mg/ml). The population count of actinomycetes fluctuated from 1.9 × 10 5 to 8.0 × 10 5 /g soil. Out of the isolated 66 actinomycetes, 8 isolates pos sessing plant growth promoting potential were further studied and characterized by physiological and biochemical traits and identified by 16S rRNA gene sequencing as different species of Streptomycetes genera.
340actinomycetes, bacteria and fungi, and fungi and actino mycetes (Rathna Kala, 1995). However, across the globe, the world's mangroves are threatened. Mangrove habitats are being destroyed as rivers are dammed, their waters diverted and the intertidal zone extensively developed for agriculture or aquaculture. Previous study showed that actinomycetes isolated from Malay sian soil have the potential to inhibit the growth of plant pathogens (Jeffrey et al., 2007). Likewise actinomycetes isolated from Turkey's farming soil have the ability to inhibit Erwinia amylovora a bacteria that cause fireb light to apple and Agrobacterium tumefaciens a causal agent of Crown Gall disease (Oskay et al., 2004). Besides acting agents for control of plant pathogens they also possess the capability for plant growth pro motion (Nassar et al., 2003; da Silva Sousa et al., 2008). This is due to their capacity to produce IAA, antibiotics, siderophores, enzymes that have antimicrobial activity, substances that promote plant growth, solubilization of phosphates and competition with plant pathogens for substratum and nutrients (Hamdali et al., 2008; da Silva Sousa et al., 2008).The present study aims at isolation of actinomycetes from mangrove ecosystem of Andhra Pradesh, India and to evaluate their plant growth promoting potential by siderophore and IAA production assay. The study also focusses on the genetic diversity study of the plant growth promoting isolates on the basis of morphophy sio logical, biochemical and molecular characteristics.
Experimental Materials and MethodsSoil sampling. A total of 10 soil samples and one water sample were collected from the Mangrove eco system of Kakinada District, Coringa (latitude 16°44´ to 16°53´N and longitude 82°14´ to 82°22´E), Andhra Pradesh, India by systematic sampling method. Samples were collected from 15 cm depth and transported to the laboratory in sterile bags and airdried at room tem perature. The geographical locations, as well as physio chemical properties of samples were recorded (Table I).Isolation of actinomycetes. Samples were sub jected to various enrichment techniques like CaCO 3 (Tsao et al., 1960), SDS (Hayakawa and Nonomura, 1989), phenol (Hayakawa et al., 2004), and media such as, Starch Casein Agar (SCA), Actinomyce...