Isolation and Screening of P -Solubilising Endophytic Diazotropic Bacteria from Ethno-Medicinal Indigenous Rice of Jharkhand

Phosphorus is the second important key element after nitrogen as a mineral nutrient in terms of quantitative requirement for rice cultivation. Although abundant in soils, in both organic and inorganic forms, its availability is restricted as it occurs mostly in insoluble forms. Endophytic bacteria are those bacteria that reside inside the plant tissue and directly affect the growth and resistance of the associated plant by the plant growth promoting activity. These bacteria in addition to nitrogen fixation also produce a wide range of growth promoting substances and have the ability to solubilize insoluble form or rock phosphate into soluble form which are easily assessable to the plant growth and yield indigenous varieties which form the basis of pure line for genetic plant breeding at the verge of extinction due to the intervention of hybrid and high yielding variety for increasing productivity. Jharkhand has been the centre of origin of indigenous rice and about 900 varieties are reported to be indigenous to this region. The indigenous and traditional varieties are unique in genotype and harbours within it lots of beneficial bacteria and have many ethnomedicinal properties. But the productivity and the cultivation pattern of these varieties are becoming marginal which is causing huge loss to the rich rice gene pool of the region. In this study four different indigenous rice i.e Sada Gora (SG) ,Bala Gora (BG) ,Kala Gora (KG) and Kharani (KH) with lots of ethnomedicinal properties were taken for the study. Isolation, characterisation of diazotropic endophytic bacteria from these varieties was done. The bacterial isolates were tested for their ability to solubilize phosphate. Out of the 15 diazotropic endophytic isolates 11 isolates were shown to solubilize phosphate