Culture and Maintenance of microorganisms
Pure cultures of all experimental bacteria and fungi were obtained from the Microbial Type Culture Collection and Gene Bank (MTCC), Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), Chandigarh. The pure bacterial cultures were maintained on nutrient agar medium and fungal culture on potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium. Each bacterial and fungal culture was further maintained by subculturing regularly on the same medium and stored at 4o
C before use in experiments.