A potential antifungal and growth-promoting bacterium Bacillus sp. KTMA4 from tomato rhizosphere

Plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria are indigenous beneficial bacteria that will enhance plant growth as well as suppress phytopathogens. In the present study, the isolate KTMA4 showed the highest inhibition against major phytopathogens of tomato; Fusarium oxysporum (66%) and Alternaria solani (54%) after seven days of incubation. Analysis of the 16S rRNA gene sequence revealed that the isolate KTMA4 is Bacillus cereus (MG547975). The isolate produced in vitro plants growth-promoting factors such as Indole-3-acetic acid, ammonia, catalase, siderophore and 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate deaminase and it has nitrogen fixation ability. The bacterial strain has also produced lytic enzymes such as amylase, cellulase, xylanase, lipase, and protease. Moreover, the bacterium Bacillus cereus KTMA4 effectively produced biofilm, biosurfactants and salt-tolerant (5% NaCl). The bacterium exhibited intrinsic antibiotic resistance. The in vivo studies using tomato plants grown from seeds treated with the bacterial strain KTMA4 demonstrated an enhancement in seed germination percentage (86.66 ± 2.88) and vigour index (637.5 ± 21.65) over the uninoculated control (germination percentage- 28.33 ± 2.88 and vigour index- 42.5 ± 4.33). 60 days of greenhouse study revealed that the bacterial isolate enhanced the plant growth significantly (P ≤ 0.05) compared to the uninoculated control and the treated plants. Therefore the study suggests that the newly isolated rhizosphere bacterial strain can be used as a potential biocontrol agent against a multitude of fungal pathogens as well as a biofertilizer inoculant for tomato cultivation.