Original Research Article
Year: 2018 | Month: July | Volume: 5 | Issue: 7 | Pages: 153-160
Phosphorus Solubilizing Bacterial (PSB) Population Dynamics with Seasons and Their Screening in Mulberry Rhizosphere in Different Regions of Kashmir
Saima Khursheed
Temperate Sericulture Research Institute, Mirgund, SKUAST-K, Post Box 674. GPO - Srinagar, Kashmir (J&K).
ABSTRACT
In India, mulberry plant (exclusive food to silkworm Bombyx mori L.) is grown both in the temperate and tropical belts, but the soils are low in available nutrients which cause their deficiency limiting the mulberry growth both qualitatively and quantitatively. Application of fertilizers in soil involve high expenditure and also the fixing and leaching of nutrients in deeper layers immediately after application makes them unavailable. Population dynamics with seasons and screening of potential phosphate solubilizing isolates is recognized as an area of interest because such microbial inoculants could substantially reduce the chemical fertilizer requirement. Therefore, the present study was undertaken to study the influence of seasons on PSB population and the efficiency of best PSB strains isolated from three regions (north, central and south) of Kashmir. The results revealed differences in PSB population with respect to seasons and were found more abundant during spring season followed by autumn, summer and winter seasons, which could be due to better nutrient availability, soil moisture, temperature, etc prevailing during the favourable season. The selected isolates among the population of PSB’s, however, differed in their halo zone size in qualitative method with least value ranging from 1.1mm in isolate R3L1PSB1 (southern region) to highest value of 4.9mm in isolate R1L2PSB2 (northern region) and in quantitative method, it was minimum (11.11µg/ml) in isolate R1L2PSB3 (northern region) and maximum (72.9µg/ml) in isolate R1L2PSB2 (northern region) in selected isolates from each region of Kashmir.
Key words: Mulberry, Population, PSB, Regions, Rhizosphere, Screening, Seasons.
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