ABSTRACT

There are microbes that are beneficial to plant. Among these rhizobacteria, which functions as plant promoting rhizobacteria such as Pseudomonas spp and Bacillus subtilis can serve as fertilizer. These organisms have proven to accelerate germination and improve the yield of tomato plant. Colonization of rhizosphere by pgpr results in acceleration of plant growth and protection again plant pathogens. The sterilized tomato seeds are inoculated into petri dishes containing filter paper and bacteria isolates were measured using a pipette tip and inoculated onto the seeds in the petri dish adding a few drops of sterile water to promote growth and proper circulation of the bacteria. In the current study the effectiveness of microbial inoculation (Pseudomonas spp & Bacillus subtilis) for enhancing growth of tomato plants has been investigated. Significant improvement in shoot length, root length, number of leaves and number of seeds germinated was observed. Result from this study indicates that pseudomonas spp has the most plant growth promoting properties in tomato plant compared to Bacillus subtilis although both were proven to be plant growth promoting rhizobacteria. Though the plant growth promoting capacity of Bacillus subtilis were relatively low possibly due to the method adopted for seed germination, it confirmed that Bacillus subtilis possess some plant growth promoting potentials.