Influence of Cellulolytic Bacterial Augmentation on Organic Carbon and Available Phosphorus in Sandy Loam Soil under Cultivation

Microorganisms are major key players for sustaining the soil quality degraded by intensive use of syntheticchemicals for increasing crop production and therefore, use of them as inoculants or biofertilizers is an integralpart of sustainable agriculture. An effort was, therefore, made to examine the effect of cellulose degrading bacterialisolates on legume (Chickpea) based cropping systems. No chemical/organic fertilizer was added during this study. The bacterial isolates viz., Serratia sp. (MSK1 and MSK24) and Pseudomonas sp. (MSK13) exhibiting cellulaseactivity of 3.83, 4.21 and 4.52 mM glucose ml-1 h-1 respectively were introduced as inoculants. The ERIC-PCRresults showed the good survivability of introduced strains in soil, measured after crop harvest, respectively 40.2. 56.8 and 34.4 %. A significant enhancement in organic carbon and available phosphorus was observed in theinoculated plots over the control plot, indicating beneficial effect of the bioaugmentation of these inoculants