SUBHA DHULL, HARDEEP SINGH SHEORAN, RIDHAM KAKAR* AND RAJESH GERA
Haryana Space Applications Centre, CCS Haryana Agricultural University Campus, Hisar-125 004 (Haryana), India
*(e-mail : ridhamkakar@gmail.com)
(Received : February 28, 2018; Accepted : April 10, 2018)
ABSTRACT
A major problem in rainfed agroecosystems is predominance of abiotic stresses like high temperature, drought and salinity where the survival of bio-inoculants is a problematic issue. The variations in results from laboratory to field are more compounded due to various abiotic stresses that prevail under field conditions for a microbial inoculant to establish and to show the desired effect. Such problems can be overcome by screening programme for efficient stress tolerant isolates. A total of 15 Rhizobium strains were isolated with a view to screen out temperature tolerant isolates. Selected isolates were biochemically characterized also evaluated for their plant growth promoting traits and tested for their tolerance to different temperatures such as high temperature (30, 35, 40 and 45oC), using YEMA medium plates under in vitro conditions. After screening for above conditions results showed that one Rhizobium strain GB-5c was tolerant to all conditions of temperature. The data obtained in the present study suggested that Rhizobium strain GB-5c would be ideal bioinoculant for arid and semi-arid regions.
Key words : Rainfed, temperature, survival, Rhizobium, YEMA