2.1. Endophyte isolation and identification
The bark of Moringa peregrina Forssk. (Moringaceae), growing in the
wild mountains of Jabal Al-Akhdar (23° 04′ 22.00 N″, 57° 40′ 07.00 E″),
Sultanate of Oman, was detached from the tree and transported to
laboratory in sterile zip bags. To isolate endophytic microbes, a
method of Arnold et al. [8] was adopted. Briefly, 20 bark samples were
cut into 60 pieces (0.5 cm) and surface sterilized with 2.5% sodium
hypochlorite (10 min in a shaking incubator at 120 rpm) and washed
with autoclaved distilled water (DW) to remove the contaminants,
rhizobacteria and mycorrhizal fungi. The bark pieces were carefully