Abstract
The study was designed in order to isolate the pesticide-degrading beneficial bacteria from agricultural land of Punjab, India. Among the isolated bacterial strains, two were capable of solubilizing tricalcium phosphate on Pikovskaya's agar. They also had the potential to degrade all the three selected pesticides viz., 20% metsulfuron-methyl (Knockout), 25% propiconazole (Shine) and 15% clodinafop-propargyl (Clo). These promising isolates were identified as Bacillus sp. SWP1 and B. safensis SWP5 on the basis of 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Pesticide degradation by both SWP1 and SWP5 strains with and without the pesticide clodinafop-propargyl applied on Zea mays was evaluated under pot experiment. Treatment of maize seeds with SWP5 resulted in 100% seed germination without pesticide and 93% with pesticide while treatment with SWP1 resulted in 86 and 80% germination with and without the pesticide, respectively. The physical and chemical properties of soil were also improved after treatment with both SWP1 and SWP5. The other plant parameters, such as length and weight, were considerably enhanced upon the application of SWP1 and SWP5. The results of this study indicate that both pesticide-degrading bacilli may be employed as bioinoculants for improving the production of several crops along with the reduction of the level of pesticides present in agricultural soil of Punjab.