Seema Rawat, Asrar Izhari and Amir Khan
The agriculture and agri-food sector is expected to move towards environmentally sustainable development, while increasing its productivity and simultaneously protecting the natural resource base for future generations. In view of its global significance in agriculture production and human health, wheat agroecosystem has been studied extensively from the viewpoint of bacterial diversity across various regions of the world. The race for producing more wheat by adopting intensive agronomic practices and applying more fertilizers is thought to have more adverse effects on the diversity of bacteria in the wheat fields. The global interest has been shifted towards beneficial microrganisms in bulk soil and rhizosphere in natural agroecosystems contributing soil health and plant productivity can be exploted as bioinoculants to increase more crop productivity. In the present study a gradual increase in population count (log10 cfu) of bacteria from 0d (6.83± 0.25) to 90d (8.50± 0.82) was observed and thereafter population started declining. Bacillus was documented to be dominant population of zero day (71.42%). It constituted the dominant microflora of rhizosphere (37.5%) and in rhizoplane (49%) of 30d crop. Pseudomonas was the most dominant population (29.09%) of rhizosphere (62.5%) and in rhizoplane (40%) of 90d crop. All isolates recovered from 30d, 60d and 120d rhizoplane exhibited siderophore production. Maximum P-solubilizers were recovered from 60d rhizospheric samples. These isolates showed potency to be exploited as bioinoculants.
