Open Access

ARTICLE

Antimicrobial and plant growth-promoting activities of bacterial endophytes isolated from Calotropis procera (Ait.) W.T. Aiton

MUHAMMAD HAMAYUN^1,*, NASIR KHAN¹, MUHAMMAD NAUMAN KHAN², MUHAMMAD QADIR¹, ANWAR HUSSAIN¹, AMJAD IQBAL³, SUMERA AFZAL KHAN⁴, KHUSHNOOD UR REHMAN⁵, IN-JUNG LEE^6,*

1 Plant-Microbe Interactions Lab, Department of Botany, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, KP, Pakistan
2 Department of Botany, Bacha Khan University Charsadda, Charsadda, 24420, Pakistan
3 Department of Food Science and Technology, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Mardan, 23200, Pakistan
4 Centre of Biotechnology and Microbiology, University of Peshawar, Peshawar, 25000, Pakistan
5 Department of Botany, Islamia College University, Peshawar, 25000, Pakistan
6 Department of Applied Biosciences, Kyungpook National University, Daegu, 41566, Korea

* Address correspondence to: In-Jung Lee, ; Muhammad Hamayun,

BIOCELL 2021, 45(2), 363-369. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2021.013907

Received 26 August 2020; Accepted 22 November 2020; Issue published 19 February 2021

Abstract

Bacterial endophytes are beneficial to their hosts as they can fix nitrogen in the soil and make it available to the host. Endophytic bacteria also secrete plant growth-promoting hormones to support their host plants under normal as well as stress conditions. The current study aimed to isolate endophytic bacteria from different parts of Calotropis procera, i.e., roots, stem and leaves of Calotropis procera (Ait.) W.T. Aiton. Plants were collected from the Lundkhwar, district Mardan. A total of 12 bacterial strains, i.e., six from roots, three from the stem and three from the leaves were isolated. The strains were screened for their growth-promoting activity in rice plants because rice shows a quick and easy response to the bioactive compounds present in the culture filtrate (CF) of the potent endophytic strains. The rice plants were cultivated in pots containing 30 mL of 0.8% w/v water-agar medium. The pots were placed in a growth chamber, operated at 28 ± 0.3°C for 14 h (day); and 25 ± 0.3°C for 10 h (night), at 70% relative-humidity. Among the isolated strains, R1, S1, S3, L1, R5 and R6 showed visible growth promotion in rice plants. The biochemical analysis revealed that the strains were able to produce indole acetic acid (IAA) and flavonoids in higher quantities. Moreover, the strains also produced bioactive compounds that inhibited the growth of Escherichia coli and Aspergillus flavus using the well diffusion method. From the results, it was concluded that these strains can secrete potent compounds that can promote the host plant growth and inhibit the growth of pathogenic microorganisms and, therefore, can be used as bio-fertilizer and bio-control agents.

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