Paper Title
ISOLATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF DROUGHT TOLERANT AND MULTIPLE PLANT GROWTH PROMOTING RHIZOBACTERIA FROM RAINFED FIELDS OF JAISALMER TO ALLEVIATE DROUGHT STRESS IN WHEAT

Abstract
Drought is one of the most negatively affecting an abiotic stress to plants and reduces the demand of food required to feed the day by day increasing population which is predicted to be climbed upto 8 billion by 2030. So to cope up to the problem of food security raised by above way, some beneficial bacteria known as plant growth promoting bacteria (PGPB) could be good, safe and cheap alternative way. In the close vicinity of the roots of plants ample amount of bacteria are found which promote the growth of plants and also protect them from the deleterious effects of abiotic stress like the drought. Keeping these facts in mind, an exploration of the drought affected (rainfed) conditions of four different villages of Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India was done to isolate the drought tolerant and plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR). Consequently, few soil samples were collected from the rhizosphere of wheat plant and other wild plants from those villages and more than 100 different morph types were isolated. After that about seven bacteria were screened for drought tolerance upto 30% of PEG-6000 and for multiple plant growth promoting traits (PGP-traits) like production of phytohormones, ammonia production, phosphate solubilization, siderophores production, cynogenesis, exoploysaccharide production and antifungal activity etc. Pot experiment was conducted using those seven bacteria and it was found that among them two, the Bacillus altitudinis DT-85 and Bacillus paramycoides DT-113 were outstanding to promote the plant agronomic traits like root and shoot lengths, fresh and dry weights, chlorophyll content etc. after 45 days and 75 days of sowing of wheat crop (variety HD-2967). Also enzymatic activity like super oxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT) and phytohormone like IAA and compatible solute (proline) production were beneficial to alleviate the drought stress and increased the production of wheat crop under adverse effect of drought in pot experiment.