Identification and characterization of Azotobacter sp. screened from different agro-climatic zones in Telangana.

Declining soil quality due to overexploited used of chemical-based fertilizers, pesticides and insecticides have deleterious effect on soil health. This has resulted in decreased productivity. The use of azotobacter sp. as an alternative to the chemical based Agri-practice can be a remedial step to increase soil healthiness and in turn productivity. For the proposed research, soil sample from rhizosphere of Pigeon pea cultivated at Mahabubnagar and Medchal agroclimatic zone of Telangana. The Azotobacter sp. were isolated and maintained on Ashby’s mannitol agar medium. The Azotobacter sp. were evaluated by morphological, biochemical and molecular attributes. Biochemical tests and 16s rRNA sequencing revealed identification of strains as Azotobacter beijerinckii strain (BKPOU06TS) and Azotobacter tropicalis strain (BKPOU08TS). The 16s rRNA sequences of Azotobacter beijerinckii strain (BKPOU06TS) and Azotobacter tropicalis strain (BKPOU08TS) were submitted to GenBank with accession ID- OP536202 and OP536206 respectively