An investigation was carried out with bulk and pigeonpea rhizosphere soils collected from Middle Gangetic region of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Collected soils were analyzed for physicochemical characteristics, bacterial population and R/S ratio. In the present study, bacterial count of rhizosphere soils were found to range between 250×105 to 40×105 whereas in bulk soil ranging from 220×105 to 14×105. The R/S ratio ranging from 5.74 to 1.12, indicating positive rhizospheric effect in collected soil samples. In addition, bacterial population associated with bulk and pigeonpea rhizosphere soils were also evaluated in vitro plant growth promoting attributes. In the present investigation, 46%, 16.6%, 75% and 21% of bacterial population associated with rhizosphere soil were found to be phosphate solubilizing, IAA, siderophore and HCN producing respectively whereas in bulk soil 5.5%, 38.8% and 67% of bacterial population were found to be phosphate solubilizing, IAA and siderophore producing respectively. The results suggest that higher percentage of phosphate solubilizers, IAA, siderophore and HCN producers were found in rhizospheric soils of pigeonpea as comparison to bulk soils and may be exploited as biofertilizers or microbial inoculants in the soils of pigeon pea crops growing in the vicinity of middle Gangetic region of Uttar Pradesh.
IAA, HCN, Gangetic region and R/S ratio.
© The Author(s) 2016. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.