Plant growth promoting and antagonistic traits of bacteria isolated from forest soil samples.

Background and objectives: Sustainability in agricultural systems without compromising the environmental quality and conservation is one of the major concerns of today's world. The excessive use of agrochemicals is posing serious threats to the environment. Therefore identification of efficient plant growth promoting (PGP) bacteria as an alternative to chemically synthesized fertilizers is of great interest.

Materials and methods: In the present investigation, forest soil samples collected were used for isolation of efficient plant growth promoting bacteria.

Results: Total of 14 bacteria were isolated, and tested for various PGP properties. Out of the 14 isolates, four isolates labelled as BKOU-1, BKOU-8, BKOU-13 and BKOU-14 showed significant plant growth promoting traits, hydrolytic enzyme production and effectively restricted the mycelial development of phyto-pathogenic fungi (Fusarium oxysporum and Macrophomina phaseolina). 16 S rRNA gene sequences of the bacterial isolates BKOU-1, BKOU-8, BKOU-13 and BKOU-14 were found to have maximum identity with Bacillus aerius, Bacillus infantis, Alcaligenes faecalis and Klebsiella Oxytoca respectively. All four bacterial isolates nucleotide sequences were submitted to GenBank and NCBI accession numbers were generated as follows: OL721916, OL721918, OL721919 and OL721926.

Conclusion: According to the findings of the study, these PGPR could be employed as biofertilizers/biopesticides to boost crop yield of different crops in sustainable manner.