الفهرس 
AbstractOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
The highly diverse nature of plant microbiota is indicative of many ecological roles of this group of microorganisms. For important medicinal plants such as Artemisia annua L (Family Asteraceae), there can be numerous functional attributes of the associated bacterial endophytes but the diversity of such endophytes remains widely unknown. To understand their potential functional diversity, endophytic bacteria associated with the plant were isolated from different plant parts including leaves, stems and roots. Bacterial community of leaves showed more diversity than those of stems and roots. Bacterial isolates were in vitro screened for various plant growth promoting attributes including Indole acetic acid, 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylate (ACC) deaminase production, and nitrogen fixation. Ninety five percent of isolates were able to produce IAA, while 7.5% produced ACC deaminase, and 15% were able to fix nitrogen. Based on their potential plant growth promoting attributes, 25 bacterial isolates of 16 genera belonging to four phyla were identified. Proteobacteria (36%) and Firmicutes (36%) were the most predominant isolated bacteria, followed by Actinobacteria (24%) and Bacteroidetes (4%). The most promising isolates (ten) were selected for the investigation of their ability to enhance seed germination. It was observed that treatment with isolates AAR80 and AAL56 increased germination rate of inoculated seedling. Moreover, (48%) of the isolates showed antimicrobial activity when tested against indicator pathogens, and showed antimicrobial activity. This study revealed that endophytic bacteria isolated from Artemisia annua L have the potential to be used as growth promoters and antimicrobial agent.