Isolation and Characterization of Antagonist Bacteria from Chickpea Rhizosphere against Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ciceris

Fourteen potential antagonist bacterial isolates were obtained from soil samples collected from the rhizospheric soil of healthy chickpea. Colony and morphological characterization revealed that all isolates were diversified and distinct from each other. The antagonism characters against Fusarium wilt pathogen of theses isolates were very prominent and ranged from 21.7 to 75.0%, seven out of fourteen isolates were showing more than 50.0% inhibition of Fusarium oxysporum under In vitro assay. These seven highly potential bacterial isolates were identified by 16s rRNA sequencing out of which three highly effective antagonistic isolates were identified as Burkholderia sp. (K10), Bacillus subtilis (K18) and Bacillus aryabhattai (K21) showing 71.2, 75.0 and 70.2% antagonism, respectively. The plant growth promoting characters of all the isolates viz., nitrogen fixation, phosphate solubilization, zinc solubilization, siderphore production and IAA production were studied. Highly effective antagonist isolates K18 and K21 were also efficient for N2 fixation and Zn solubilization. These two promising antagonist isolates with PGPR activities could be further evaluated in field study for their commercial exploitation