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Environmental Escherichia coli occur as natural plant growth-promoting soil bacterium

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Abstract

Currently, it is presumed that Escherichia coli is not a normal inhabitant of the soil. Soilborne E. coli strains were isolated from broad range of 7 geoclimatic zones of India, indicating that E. coli can survive and thrive under different extreme soil conditions. Diversity among E. coli strains from widely separated geographic regions using enterobacterial repetitive intergenic consensus (ERIC)-PCR did not reveal any relationships between the genotypes and the source of isolation. Inoculation of maize (Zea mays cv. Arkil) seeds with E. coli NBRIAR3 (NBRIAR3) significantly enhanced (P < 0.05) plant growth and nutrient uptake, when compared with uninoculated control. Presence or absence of NBRIAR3 did not affect significantly (P < 0.05) diversity indexes, using substrate utilization patterns on the Biolog Eco plates. Clone libraries based on 16S rRNA gene from rhizosphere of maize plants demonstrated rather similar phylotype diversity from the uninoculated control and NBRIAR3-treated rhizosphere soil, which further indicated that NBRIAR3 did not exert a major influence on the overall bacterial diversity. The methodological approach described in this study supports the idea that E. coli should be treated as native soil bacterium instead of as an “indicator” of the possible presence of other fecal coliform bacteria.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the Director, NBRI, for providing necessary facilities. We are grateful to unknown reviewers for their very constructive and helpful comments. The study was supported by Task Force grant NWP-006 from Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), New Delhi, India.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Plant Microbe Interactions, National Botanical Research Institute, Rana Pratap Marg, Lucknow, 226 001, India

    Chandra Shekhar Nautiyal, Ateequr Rehman & Puneet Singh Chauhan

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  1. Chandra Shekhar Nautiyal
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  2. Ateequr Rehman
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  3. Puneet Singh Chauhan
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Correspondence to Chandra Shekhar Nautiyal.

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Communicated by Joerg Overmann.

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Nautiyal, C.S., Rehman, A. & Chauhan, P.S. Environmental Escherichia coli occur as natural plant growth-promoting soil bacterium. Arch Microbiol 192, 185–193 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-010-0544-1

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