Abstract
Soil bacteria1 called rhizobia are gram-negative capable to colonize the soil immediately surrounding roots under the influence of the plant “rhizosphere” and reduce atmospheric nitrogen into the form available to plants through nitrogen fixation process. Nitrogen is the most limiting and supplied nutrient to most plants, and the determinant of plant growth. Legumes differ with most plants because they have access to nitrogen from both mineral and symbiotic sources. Small-scale farmers who are the major legume producers in Africa rarely apply fertilizers during legume production. Hence, the crop is largely dependent on fixed nitrogen from native nitrogen fixers. Isolation of rhizobia for legume production has been given a little attention in Africa due to inadequate research or negligence of researchers and unawareness of its potential in legume production as well as lack of an intention from skilled personnel to popularize the technology. Evaluation of effectiveness of isolated rhizobia is essential for inoculants preparation, host specificity recommendation and symbiotic effectiveness. The isolation, determination of their population in the soil and assessing factors affecting their population and testing the effectiveness of native nitrogen fixers with respect to right trap host crop are given a special attention in this review.
Highlights
Nitrogen is the most limiting nutrient for growth of leguminous plants like Common beans, Soya beans, Cow peas and Garden peas because that present in the soil cannot support growth [1]
During the study for isolation and characterization of Rhizobium specie and determination of their potency for growth factor production, 260 bacteria were isolated on plate count Agar up on which 53 were nitrogen fixing rhizobia and 43 types of morphologies were found with 5 effective rhizobia strains producing plant growth factors [44]
The symbiotic Rhizobia-legume system is the major contributor of biologically fixed nitrogen as compared with non-symbiotic nitrogen-fixing bacteria [157]
Summary
Nitrogen is the most limiting nutrient for growth of leguminous plants like Common beans, Soya beans, Cow peas and Garden peas because that present in the soil cannot support growth [1]. Rhizobia are very important for crop production because they form symbiotic relationship with legume the process that converts atmospheric elemental Nitrogen (N2) into ammonia (NH3) accounting for 65% of the nitrogen currently utilized in agriculture [2]. During the study for isolation and characterization of Rhizobium specie and determination of their potency for growth factor production, 260 bacteria were isolated on plate count Agar up on which 53 were nitrogen fixing rhizobia and 43 types of morphologies were found with 5 effective rhizobia strains producing plant growth factors [44]. Isolation of efficient native nitrogen fixing rhizobia for common beans (Phaseolus vulgaris), Soybean (Glycine max), Cow pea (Vigna unguiculata) and Garden pea (Pisum sativum) and produce them as inoculants to improve legume production is important
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