National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS)
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PRINT ISSN : 2319-7692
Online ISSN : 2319-7706 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcmas@gmail.com / submit@ijcmas.com Editor-in-chief: Dr.M.Prakash Index Copernicus ICV 2018: 95.39 NAAS RATING 2020: 5.38 |
Phosphorus (P) is one of the major essential macronutrients for biological growth and metabolism of plants. Tea (Camellia sinensis L) plantation requires adequate amount of P for the proper yield of tea leaves. However, due to acidic nature of tea growing soils, phosphorus fixation is a common phenomenon. A close look at the different pools of soil P reveals, major portion of soil P is present in the form of organic P. Among various members of organic P, myo-inositol hexakisphosphate (or commonly called as phytate) often dominates in soils. This potent sink of P is unavailable to plants. Only a group of microorganisms can hydrolyze phytate through their phytase enzyme and liberate phosphate, that in turn can contribute to plant nutrition. In this work, 2 phytate solubilizing microorganisms, identified as Bacillus safensis and Bacillus siamensis were isolated from the rhizospheric soils of tea gardens in Assam, India. They were found to show clear halo zone around their colonies on the selective media due to solubilization of Ca-phytate. They were also inoculated in Na-phytate containing Pikovskya’s broth. The phosphate concentration varied from 6.2 to 0.8 µg P ml-1 broth during incubation period. Both of them were able to liberate significantly (p<0.001) higher phosphate in solution through solubilization of phytate present in the media. They were also mass cultured and incubated with tea growing soil under laboratory condition. Both the microbes treated soils showed increase in available P content during the incubation period. Bacillus siamensis treated soil showed a gradual increase in P content till 80 days of the incubation with a value of 16.5±0.8 mg kg-1 soil. This microbe was also found to be increasing significantly higher P in soil than the other microbial strain and control. This work suggests, tea cultivating soils are a natural habitat of phytate solubilizing microorganisms. Also, an indigenous phytate solubilizing microorganism Bacillus siamensis has ability to increase the plant available P in soil. Thus it can be applied in tea garden soils for efficient phosphorus management.
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