1Department of Soil Science and Agricultural Chemistry, Uttar Banga Krishi Viswavidyalaya, Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India
2Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India
3Senior Scientist, ICAR-National Institute of Research on Jute and Allied Fibre Technology, 12 Regent Park, Kolkata-700040, India
4Kalyan Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Purulia, West Bengal, India
5Dakshin Dinajpur Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Dakshin Dinajpur, West Bengal, India
*Corresponding author: drdebprasadray@gmail.com
Online published on 26 September, 2016.
Rhizospheric soil from tea [Camellia sinensis L.] was screened for the presence of phosphate solubilizing bacterial populationin-vitro where eighteen isolates were initially selected based on their growth characteristics. These isolates were further screened based on their growth performances under different stress conditions like growth temperature (15, 20, 25, 30 and 35°C), pH of growth medium (4 and 5.4), six Al concentrations using AlCl3 (2.5, 5, 7.7, 10, 25 and 50 mM) and desiccations with five concentrations of polyethylene glycol 6000 (0, 20, 30, 40 and 50%). A score sheet was developed for screening the efficient PSB strains which can tolerate stress by giving equal weightage to their growth performance under different stress conditions. A total of 11 PSB isolates were finally selected and further study is warranted for inoculating these isolates for increasing P nutrition for tea crop.
Tea, phosphate solubilizing bacteria, stress
