An Environmentally Friendly Engineered Azotobacter Strain That Replaces a Substantial Amount of Urea Fertilizer while Sustaining the Same Wheat Yield.

ABSTRACT: In our endeavor to improve the nitrogen fixation efficiency of a soil diazotroph that would be unaffected by synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers, we have deleted a part of the negative regulatory gene nifL and constitutively expressed the positive regulatory gene nifA in the chromosome of Azotobacter chroococcum CBD15, a strain isolated from the local field soil. No antibiotic resistance gene or other foreign gene was present in the chromosome of the engineered strain. Wheat seeds inoculated with this engineered strain, which we have named Azotobacter chroococcum HKD15, were tested for 3 years in pots and 1 year in the field. The yield of wheat was enhanced by ∼60% due to inoculation of seeds by A. chroococcum HKD15 in the absence of any urea application. A

SUBMITTER: Bageshwar UK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5514683 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature