Author(s):

Ratul Moni Ram and HB Singh

Abstract: Drought is often considered as one of the major environmental stress the productivity of crop plants around the world. Role of various microorganisms in mitigating drought stress in several crops have been documented by various researchers in the past. The experiment was conducted for isolation of agriculturally important microorganisms (AIMs) having drought tolerant potential from six districts of eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bundelkhand Region. Screening for drought tolerance was performed for 120 bacterial strains isolated from different moisture stressed sites of the above mentioned region. Polyethylene glycol (PEG) solution was used for screening of drought tolerant bacteria. Selection of the bacteria was done on the basis of their long term survival potential under drought stress conditions. The colony forming unit (CFU) ml^-1 counting of the isolates were done and 10 drought tolerant bacteria were selected on the basis of their high CFU counting. The isolates were also tested for their thermo tolerance ability and all of them found to survive for 5 days at 55 ËšC. Biocontrol potential of the isolates was checked against chickpea dry root rot Rhizoctonia bataticola pathogen and the isolate BHU 08 was found to show profound antagonism and demonstrated maximum similarity with Bacillus sp after 16S rRNA gene sequencing analysis. Isolation of bacteria having drought tolerance and against ability altogether will be a pioneer concept and if further explored, would help in alleviating the effect of drought on various crops in near future.

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