Published Paper Details:

The shift to organic agricultural practices in the recent years has encouraged researchers to develop biological agents to combat the problems of pest infestation and the accumulation of chemicals in the soil. A number of microorganisms have been found to produce and regulate phytohormones which play a major role in the plant growth promotion, development and response to environmental changes including stress. Hence, our main target was to develop a phytohormone-based plant growth promoting agent to study the difference in plant growth and development after its application in the rhizosphere of soil, thereby determining the efficacy of the product. An interaction study was conducted among the three commonly available laboratory strains of Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus thuringiensis and Trichoderma viride and the approach was exploited for the formulation of two organic products. An increase in shoot length by 10%, increase in number of nodes by 6% and increase in the number of leaves by 23% were observed after the application of the fungal formulation. The chlorophyll content assay showed increased chlorophyll content in the leaves of plants after the application of the bacterial formulation. Higher disease resistance was observed too after the application of fungal product. The novelty of this approach lies not only in the formulations which resulted in growth promotion, protection of the plant against pathogens and longer shelf life but also in low capital costs, easy availability of carrier materials and the whole approach being environment friendly.