Effect of Siderophore on Plant Growth Promotion

At present fertilizer has become essential to modern agriculture to feed the growing population. Though chemical fertilizers increase crop production; their overuse has hardened the soil, decreased fertility, strengthened pesticides, polluted air and water, and released greenhouse gases, thereby bringing hazards to human health and environment as well. Due to the adverse effect of chemical fertilizers and the presence of plant pathogens, apart from using chemically based methods present study provides a biological platform to increase plant productivity. It has been reported that many siderophore producing bacterial and fungal strains have their potentials in plant growth promotions because although iron is abundant in the soil it is unavailable to plants because of its low solubility. Thus siderophore produce will chelate iron and make it available to the plant. Pseudomonas fluorescens was able to produce extracellular water soluble yellow green siderophore of pyoverdine type in succinate medium. Siderophore produced was also proved to be useful for plant growth promotion due to increase in root length, shoot length and number of leaves of leguminous plants like Lens Culinaris and Phaseolus lunatus when grown under iron limiting conditions with siderophore supplements. Thus siderophore can be used in combination with other biofertilizers to increase crop productivity.