Author(s):

Shinjan Dey, Avishek Sarkar and Sikha Dutta

Abstract: Plant growth-promoting fungi (PGPF) are a class of non-pathogenic soil-borne filamentous fungi that have beneficial effects on plants. It has been reported that PGPF increase the plant growth directly or indirectly by fixing nitrogen, producing phytohormones, inducing systemic resistance etc. The association of PGPF with plant roots has also been shown to modulate growth, morphology, nitrogen assimilation, resource allocation and mineral uptake of the host plant and also improves host reproductive fitness with subsequent increase in biomass and grain yield of crop plants. So, by considering the beneficial effects of PGPF and the growing demands of biofertilizers for sustainable agriculture, our focus was to isolate and characterize the PGPF from the rhizospheric soil of the plant Aloe barbadensis Mill. growing in Burdwan district, West Bengal, India. After isolation, the isolated PGPF were studied for their plant growth promoting traits like, Phosphate solubilising property, IAA production, ammonia production, HCN production etc. Bioactivities like antifungal activity as well as stress tolerance properties like, salinity stress and some heavy metal stress were also tested. The best potent strain was then selected and identified by 18s r-RNA sequencing. Subsequent preparation of the phylogenetic tree, it was confirmed that this PGPF fungal strain was Aspergillus terreus (MCC 1819). Furthermore, augmentation of growth and vigour of Aloe barbadensis by application of this PGPF has also been noticed.

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