4. Plant growth promoting traits
All isolates, except the two Bacillus species i.e. BC1AW and BC4SS, were able to scavenge the ferric form of iron from the ferric-blue dye complex which was shown by a color change in the medium from blue to orange indicating siderophore production(Fig. 1).
Analysis of in vitro production of cyanide revealed a positive result only for PP2SS, which produced HCN on NGA-plate medium amended with glycine as a precursor of HCN. In the inorganic phosphate solublization test, all isolates except Bacillus species produced a clear zone (halo) on Sperber medium, indicating their capability to solubilizethe inorganic phosphate with the highest solublization index of 5.12 by P. putida PP3WT (Table. 4).