REETHA, D. STELLA AND M. DEIVEEKASUNDARAM
Abstract
An in vitro experiment was carried out to study the effect of different levels of salinity imposed on growth, exopolysaccharide production and adhesion of Azospirillum lipoferum SPA-1 to sunflower roots. The results showed that the growth, EPS production and adhesion of Azospirillum lipoferunt SPA-1 was affected by the salinity. But the bacterium, Azospirillurn lipoferunt SFA-1 could tolerate the saline stress upto 200 mM of NaC1 concentration. It was also observed that the growth, EPS production and adhesion were negatively correlated with increasing levels of NaCI and the EPS production and adhesion was found to be positively correlated with each other.