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Plant-bacterial interactions in the rhizosphere are complex and determine the plant health, productivity and soil fertility. The Plant Growth Promoting bacterial strains were isolated from the rhizospheric soil of the cotton plant from various places of Haryana, India. One of the most promising isolate exhibiting maximum PGP traits was identified as Pseudomonas fluorescens based on the biochemical characterization, phenotypic microarray analysis and 16S rDNA sequencing. The isolate was initially screened on the basis of the seed germination assay and was then screened in vitro for their plant growth promoting traits like production of indoleacetic acid (IAA), ammonia production (NH3), hydrogen cyanide (HCN) production, siderophore production, phosphate solubilization, ACC deaminase activity and acetylene reduction activity (ARA). The isolate exhibited positive results for ammonia and siderophore production and phosphate solubilization. The isolate also showed acetylene reduction activity (ARA). The results indicated that P. fluorescens has significant potential when applied to soil-plant system to uncover its efficacy as effective PGPR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scrapie is a unique disease whose etiology is through protein infection rather than a biological agent. Genetic polymorphism at 136, 154 and 171 codons provide the susceptibility/ resistance to the disease outbreak. PCR-SSCP has been found to be a robust technique for the identification of genetic variants because of SNP in the ORF (open reading frame) of PrP gene efficiently at low cost, evidenced by novel DNA sequences resulted from the SSCP variants. Prevalence of susceptible alleles at 136, 154 and 171 codons however did not result into the scrapie disease clinical symptoms in indigenous sheep breeds. Polymorphism at other loci in indigenous sheep could have played significant role in prevention of disease symptoms in indigenous sheep. The traditional feeding and management exclusively on range grazing without any concentrate supplementation having any animal protein might be responsible for the protection of animals from scrapie disease infection despite presence of susceptible alleles in the indigenous sheep animals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]