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Wheat Growth Dependent Succession of Culturable Endophytic Bacteria and Their Plant Growth Promoting Traits

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Abstract

Endophytic bacteria present ubiquitously in all plant parts. Their community structure may vary depending on plant tissue and growth condition. This work mainly focused on exploring the diversity of culturable nitrogen-fixing endophytic bacteria in above-ground plant parts of wheat by harvesting it during various growth points (Seed stage, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd month old plants, respectively). Distinct endophytic bacterial colonies were selected on Jensen’s agar plate. Based on the 16S rRNA sequencing, 43 putative nitrogen-fixing endophytic bacteria were identified. Most of the isolates were found unique to the plant growth phase except for Pseudomonas sp., Bacillus sp., Paenibacillus sp., Microbacterium sp., Exiguobacterium sp. Further, endophytic bacteria were scrutinized for their plant growth promoting traits. They were found positive for IAA production (100%), P-solubilization (21%), Zn-solubilization (63%), ammonia production (93%), and nifH gene (33%). Extracellular enzyme production was found positive for cellulase (98%), pectinase (98%), and protease (100%). Their endophytic colonization ability was assessed using reactive oxygen species (ROS) induction assay, upon their entry inside the host plant.

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Acknowledgements

JKP is grateful to Dr. Datta Madamwar, UGC-BSR-Faculty Fellow, PG Department of Biosciences, Gujarat, India, for providing facilitates and reagents for DNA sequencing.

Funding

This research work was supported by Charotar University of Science and Technology (CHARUSAT), Changa, Gujarat, India.

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  1. Department of Biological Sciences, P. D. Patel Institute of Applied Sciences, Charotar University of Science and Technology, Changa, Gujarat, 388 421, India

    Janki K. Patel, Krupa Gohel, Hiral Patel & Tanvi Solanki

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  1. Janki K. Patel
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  2. Krupa Gohel
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Contributions

JKP carried out the conceptualization, experimental designing, identification and DNA sequencing of isolates, data analysis, and writing the manuscript. KG and HP performed the experiments related to isolation of diazotrophic endophytic bacteria and characterization of plant growth promoting traits, respectively. TS carried out the experiments on endophytic colonization and root hair formation assay.

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Correspondence to Janki K. Patel.

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Patel, J.K., Gohel, K., Patel, H. et al. Wheat Growth Dependent Succession of Culturable Endophytic Bacteria and Their Plant Growth Promoting Traits. Curr Microbiol 78, 4103–4114 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00284-021-02668-6

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