Research Projects

Soil salinity has emerged as a major threat to global food security, affecting the choice of crops, production and cultivation of crops, fodder and horticultural crops and affects about 62 million hectares, which is about 20% of the world's irrigated land, at the moment. The presence of high sodium chloride levels in soil leads to nutrient deficiency in plants and decreases number of beneficial bacteria in the soil. There are many conventional methods for reclaiming saline soil like adoption of different agrotechniques, adding gypsum, calcium chloride, etc. but all have limited effectiveness and adding additional cost and time for the management of these soils. In this context, developing alternative sustainable and cost-effective methods like utilization of the potential beneficial microorganisms for the management of saline soils is an effective strategy for developing plant stress tolerance. The Western Himalayan area is a rich source of rock salt and halophytes, both of which harbour taxonomically complex salt-tolerant bacterial groups with altered physiological and structural characteristics. These microorganisms have higher genetic diversity and physiological adaptations to cope with harsh environmental conditions which may be attributed to their natural ability to exist and perform in the adverse environmental conditions. Department of Microbiology, CSKHPKV, Palampur has already isolated Enterobacter ludwigii and its Na+/H+ antiporter gene from salt mines situated in Drang area of District Mandi of Himachal Pradesh which showed promising results in salt tolerance up to 1.7 M NaCl as well as in fixing atmospheric nitrogen. With these preliminary studies conducted on microorganisms, some more halophilic plant growth promoting bacteria will be explored from rock salt mines of Mandi, Himachal Pradesh. The present proposal is designed to elucidate the understanding of salt stress tolerance mechanisms attributed by plant growth promoting halotolerant bacteria at molecular level and commercial exploitation in the form of bioinoculants in salt affected area will be studied to enhance the livelihood of peoples or farmers by meeting their demand for agricultural crops and will open new vistas for the selection and adoption of many high value cash crops.