Field monitoring of plant-growth-promoting rhizobacteria by colony immunoblotting.

Inoculant plant-growth-promoting bacteria are emerging as an important component of sustainable agriculture. There is a need to develop inexpensive methods for enumerating these organisms after their application in the field, to better understand their survival and impacts on yields. Immunoblotting is one potential method to measure viable cells, but the high cost of the conventionally used nylon membranes makes this method prohibitive.

Wheat root colonization and nitrogenase activity by Azospirillum isolates from crop plants in Korea.

Nitrogen-fixing bacteria were isolated from the rhizosphere of different crops of Korea. A total of 16 isolates were selected and characterized. Thirteen of the isolates produced characteristics similar to those of the reference strains of Azospirillum, and the remaining 3 isolates were found to be Enterobacter spp.

Local early induced resistance of plants as the first line of defence against bacteria.

This paper is an overview of a non-specific local early induced resistance (EIR) mechanism, distinct from the incompatible-specific hypersensitive reaction (HR). We have shown that the local induced resistance (LIR) described earlier is not a single and uniform response to pathogen infection, because an early (EIR) and a late form can be distinguished. EIR operates from 3-6 h post-inoculation (hpi) until about 20 hpi, and is inhibited by a short heat-shock or the eukaryotic protein synthesis inhibitor, cycloheximide.