The College of Biotechnology under Birsa Agricultural University (BAU) has found three unique isolates of Rhizobium, a nitrogen fixing bacteria from Pigeon Pea crop (Arhar) from acidic soil of Deoghar and Jamtara, helpful in increasing the crop production.
These Rhizobium isolates would help in finding a mitigation strategy for soil acidity, and overall resulting in improvement of soil health across the state. Presently, the experimentation of the isolates is at an initial stage wherein a scientist of the university is trying to convert it as a bio fertilizer. “The crop production of Jharkhand is below average compared to the national level. Through a network of ICAR we collected soil samples of all the 24 districts of Jharkhand and purified it wherein we found two unique isolates of Pigeon Pea also known as Red Gram or Arhar from Deoghar and one isolate from Jamtara districts. These will help in formation of a cheap bio fertilizer which can be used for growing any kind of crops like Pulses, Cereals, Spices and Seeds,” said faculty member Dr Himanshu Dubey, who happens to be the Principal Investigator working under ‘Indian Council of Agricultural Research (New Delhi) funded project: All India Network Project On Soil Biodiversity-Biofertilizers’ at BAU.
Notably, soil of Jharkhand is acidic is nature in many regions making it difficult to grow crops and earn a good revenue. “This latest process will benefit the farmers of Jharkhand in producing crops efficiently in acidic soil without much effort,” a Research Scholar of BAU Ram Manohar pointed out.
Sources at the university informed students pursuing post graduation in the college are learning techniques of processing the sample for purification. Scientific Reports mention that Rhizobium bacteria are estimated to carry out around 70 per cent of the world biological nitrogen fixation, reducing about 20 million tonnes of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia. They provide free fertilizer and are non-polluting compared to the manufacture of chemical fertilizers which can cause pollution to nearby water bodies. Dubey said that finding a particular isolate of Rhizobium suitable to the environment is a time taking process. He is involved in the experiment since 2009.
The ongoing study has been approved by a World Agency. “In response to our submissions of the sequence data for the isolates, the GenBank Direct Submission Staff of National Institutes of Health at USA have provided unique GenBank Accession Numbers for our nucleotide sequences released on August 28, 2013,” he added.Once, the bio-fertilizer is prepared it will be available for farmers across the nation at a reasonable rate through the Commercial department of the university, in the near future.