Indiscriminate use of oganophosphate pesticides has made their mitigation from soil essential. Among the pesticides, chlorpyrifos is a widely used broad-spectrum organophosphate effective in controlling a variety of insects. In the present study, Pseudomonas fluorescence and Pseudomonas aeruginosa were inoculated in the fields with cotton plants to determine the role of the plant-microbe interaction in the degradation of chlorpyrifos in the contaminated plots. After 25 days of inoculation, P. fluorescence and P. aeruginosa degraded 78 and 85% of chlorpyrifos in plots without cotton plants whereas 99% degradation of chlorpyrifos was observed in soil, where cotton plants were inoculated with either Pseudomonas fluorescence or Pseudomonas aeruginosa as compared to un-inoculated control soil. REP-PCR showed an increase in population of P. fluorescence from 1.52 X 10⁷ at the time of inoculation to 2.0 X 10⁷ in plots without crops whereas 3.1 X 10⁷ in plots with cotton plants on day 25. Similar trend was shown by the P. aeruginosa. Product formation indicated the appearance of 3, 5, 6-trichloro-2-pyridinol (TCP), the major metabolite of chlorpyrifos degradation, in the plots inoculated with P. aeruginosa, which disappeared to negligible amounts.