Abstract
The objective of this work was to isolate and characterize Bacillus bearing multiple plant growthpromoting traits from diseased roots of soybean and to further assess its inoculation effect on soil rhizosphere properties and nutrition in soybean. The isolate was putatively identified as Bacillus on the basis of cultural characteristics and FAMEs profile, and further sequencing of 16S rRNA gene revealed 98.7% similarity to Bacillus amyloliquefaciens and designated as strain sks_bnj_1 (AY 932823). The strain possessed multiple plant growth-promoting traits such as siderophore production, indole-3-acetic acid-like-compounds, ACC deaminase, phosphatases, phytases, HCN, cellulases, zinc solubilization and antagonisms to soil-borne pathogens. Microcosm study using soybean as an indicator crop revealed that inoculation of this strain sks_bnj_1 significantly increased rhizosphere soil properties (enzyme activities, IAA production, microbial respiration, microbial biomass-C), and nutrient content in straw (K, P, Zn, Fe, Cu, Mn) and seeds (K, P, Fe, Mn) of soybean over un-inoculated control. This study suggests that inoculation of B. amyloliquefaciens sks_bnj_1 improves most of the rhizosphere properties, plant growth, nutrient assimilation and yield of soybean and has potential to be promoted as a bioinoculant for soybean production following proper field evaluation.
Highlights
Soybean has established itself as a major oilseed crop in the rain-fed agroecosystems of India
During the course of recovery of pathogenic fungi associated with soybean roots infected with black rot complex, a predominantly occurring antagonistic bacterial isolate along with fungal isolates comprising of Trichoderma harzianum MTCC 7105, T. lactea MTCC 7110, Scerotium rolfsii, Sclerotinia sp MTCC7114, Fusarium nivale MTCC7111 were recovered (Fig. 1)
The genus Bacillus was characterized based on the distinguishing features such as Gram positive, aerobic, endospore producing, catalase-positive, rod-shaped bacteria (Reddy et al, 2008; Suresh et al, 2011) and was observed in the test isolate
Summary
Soybean has established itself as a major oilseed crop in the rain-fed agroecosystems of India. The limited area of 0.03 m ha in 1970 is scintillating around 10. M ha (Dupare et al, 2010). Despite phenomenal growth in area, it has been a matter of great concern that in spite of high yield achieved in demonstrations under real farm conditions (average 1800 kg ha-1), the national productivity still remains around
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