KOLKATA: A team of six researchers from
Visva-Bharati
have discovered a new species of bacteria that has properties to foster
plant growth
and named it
Pantoea Tagorei
after Nobel Laureate
Rabindranath Tagore
to honour him.
Bomba Dam, assistant professor at the Microbiology Laboratory, department of botany, said they decided to name the beneficial bacteria Pantoea Tagorei after Tagore as he had tried to promote agriculture to a great extent.
“This is the first time any living thing has been named after him,” he added. Among his teammates are research scholars Raju Biswas, Arijit Misra, Sandip Ghosh, Abhinaba Chakraborty and Puja Mukherjee. The findings have been published recently at Indian Journal of Microbiology.
Dam highlighted that the enormous use of chemical fertilizers on land for cultivation is making the land unusable and hence people farmers are moving towards organic farming and organic fertilizers.“We found that the bacteria found from the soil of the Jharia coal mines not only solubilizes potassium but can also replenish nitrogen, solubilize phosphorus. It also has some properties that can promote plant growth. Through analysis, it was found out that it was a new species,” said Dam, adding that they have also experimented with this bacteria by giving it to farmers and they are quite happy with the result.
Sources said the new acting VC, Sanjoy Kumar Mallik, praised the team. and said the work will have a deep impact on agriculture.
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