Dinitrogen fixing moderately halo-alkaliphilic microorganisms as a crop productivity enhancer
By Bhagwan Rekadwad, Chandrahas Khobragade
Electrical conductivity of Sea water and saline soil is above 4 dS/m (Cox et al., 1970; Sehgal, 1980). The high pH and high salinity reduced metabolic rates of dinitrogen (N2) fixing bacteria which lowered or stopped N2 fixation activity. This indicates that native beneficial microorganisms inhabiting soil either under stress or inhibited. The moderately halo-alkaliphilic microorganisms such as Bacillus (Zehran et al., 2007), Nostoc, Microcystis, Oscillatoria, Anabaena, Synechococcus (Zhang and Feng, 2008), Gluconacetobacter diazotrophicus PAL5 (Boniolo et al., 2009), Pseudomonas, Halorhodospira, Ectothiorhodospira, Bradyrhizobium, Agrobacterium, Amorphomonas Azohydromonas, Azospirillum, Ideonella (Yousuf et al., 2014) and Melilotus officinalis having the best growth and proliferation rate and have inherent ability to fix atmospheric nitrogen at varying pH (7-11), moderate salt (5-20%) concentration and electrical conductivity (1.7 and 20 dS/m) (Bruning et al., 2015). These microorganisms have potential applications in agriculture and help to conserve soil texture. Additionally, these microorganisms, improve disease resistance capacity of crop plants. Thus, these promising species can be used for sustainable agriculture in temperate regions and have great importance in the improvement of agriculture yields.
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