Novel Nano-bioformulation of Microbial Consortium to Enhance the Growth of Cicer arietinum

Aims

Present research work has been concentrating on the preparation of Nano-cellulose from agro-waste raw material such as corn cob using mechano-chemical process followed by consorting it with microbial culture to enhance the vegetative growth of plant such as Cicer arietinum.

Methods and Results

The bacterial cultures were isolated from rhizospheric soil and root nodules in selective or specific media in which encapsulated with nanocellulose under broth condition termed as nano-bio-formulation. Subsequently, this nano-bio-formulation, which contains bacterial cell in the range of 2×10⁸ ml^-1, was consorting on the seeds of chickpea for pot trials. The seed germinations were found to about 100% when broth containing nanocellulose was used as a culture and nanocellulose treated seed shown better results in terms of vegetative growths such as plant height, root length, shoot length, number of root nodules etc.

Conclusion

Bacterial cells were encapsulated using Nanocellulose to (i) protect it against adverse environment as confirmed by scanning electron microscopy and (ii)use as a carbon source as confirmed by FT-IR spectroscopy. Therefore, the microbial cultures containing nanocellulose treated seeds were shown excellent vegetative growth.

Significance and impact of study

Nanocellulose based nano bioformulations may provide the conventional carrier based biofertilizers to develop sustainable agriculture and it also has potential agro-biotechnological applications.