Archives

The present study deals with the isolation of endophytic bacterial isolates and the study of their
population in the tea leaf, stem and root samples collected from different tea gardens of Assam, India.
Out the six tea gardens studied three were commercial agrochemical based gardens and the rests
were maintained organically without direct application of agrochemicals. The endophytic bacterial
population in the root samples collected from the agrochemical based gardens ranged between 9.2
x103 to 8.7 x 103 followed by stem (8.7 x 102 - 5.8 x 102) and leaves (3.4 x 102 - 3.1 x 102). Similarly,
the endophytic bacterial population in the root samples collected from the organically maintained
agrochemical free gardens ranged between 10.2 x 104 - 8.8 x 104 followed by stem (9.3x 103 - 7.8 x
103) and leaves (8.6x 102 - 7.3 x 102). Hence, the endophytic bacterial population in the samples
collected from organically maintained agrochemical free gardens was significantly higher in
comparison to agrochemical based gardens.
Key words: Agrochemicals, endophytes, Camellia sinensis