Ratul Nath, G. D. Sharma and Madhumita Barooah
Microorganisms present within the intercellular spaces of plant parts, enhancing plant growth and development, are referred as endophytes. They are the endosymbionts without showing any visible symptoms of their presence. In this paper we compared the tri calcium phosphate solubilizing activity of two different endophytic Penicillium species isolated from tea leaves. Both the isolates showed remarkable phosphate solubilizing activity up to eight days with an increase of acidity of the medium. Tri-calcium phosphate solubilizing activity of species1 ranged between 39.22±1.17 to 86.10±1.20μg/ml while that of species2 varied between 32.57±1.41 to 84.25±1.5 μg/ml within a span of 2 to 10 days. The pH of the medium decreased from 6.25±0.26 to 3.22±0.22 and 6.22±0.45 to 3.54±0.35 for species1 and species2 respectively within the same peroid. The isolates showed good phosphate solubilizing ability and thus have potential to be used as biofertilizer agents.
