Diversity studies of Azotobacter spp. from cotton-wheat cropping systems of India

Azotobacter are the favored bioinoculants being promoted for cotton crop in India. In order to develop bioinoculants, both metabolic fingerprinting and genetic fingerprinting have been used to study the diversity among Azotobacter spp. isolated from four different cotton-wheat cropping regions of India. On the basis of acetylene reduction, indole acetic acid production and ammonia excretion, from 76 free-living diazotrophs isolated from the rhizospheric soil of cotton, 20 efficient isolates were selected for further studies. Morphological characterization indicated a close resemblance of these isolates to Azotobacter spp. BIOLOG cataloguing divided them into two main groups, but amplified ribosomal DNA restriction analysis clustered the isolates from the four regions having different soil types into four separate sub-clusters. Metabolic fingerprinting was not able to detect subtle differences among the isolates as achieved with genetic fingerprinting. However, 16S rRNA is a highly conserved locus. Variations observed could be due to domestication of the isolates in different agro-ecological niches.