Abstract
Vitamin B-12 is an essential vitamin playing a vital role in red blood cell formation, maintenance of central nervous system (CNS) and involved in metabolism of every cell in body. It is widely used as dietary supplement worldwide and used to treat anemia. The present study focuses on isolation and extraction of vitamin B-12 producing Pseudomonas sp. from rhizosphere, non-rhizosphere soil and fish gut (Tilapia sp.). The vitamin B-12 producers and non-producers were enumerated from the samples. Vitamin B-12 producing Pseudomonas sp. from fish gut was analyzed using auxonography method. Further, the vitamin B-12 from all the isolated bacterial samples were purified and quantified using high performance liquid chromatography technique (HPLC). Rhizosphere soil (68.4%) showed highest population of vitamin B-12 producers than non-rhizosphere soil (40%) and fish gut (60%). Pseudomonas sp. from rhizosphere soil (R6) showed higher vitamin B-12 production (11.54 mg/l) whereas non-rhizosphere soil and fish gut showed 5.25 mg/l and 6.68 mg/l. Control strain, Propionibacterium freudenreichii - 1950 had production of 8.1 mg/l which lower than the strain-R6. These wild type organisms when optimized or genetically modified can synthesis high amounts of vitamin B-12 which supports to overcome the vitamin B-12 deficiency worldwide.