Received: 9th August 2021; Accepted : 21^st October 2021

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to understand the migration of the OTUs from rice rhizosphere to endosphere at vegetative and flowering stages of the crop. The soil and plant samples were studied through culture independent molecular PCR-DGGE technique involving denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE) of PCR-amplified V3 region of 16S rRNA gene. The DGGE analysis revealed higher species richness in soil, followed by root, stem and leaf. The analyses for range-weighted richness and Shannon diversity index indicated vegetative stage carries more diverse microflora in soil and root samples than stem and leaf samples. The Sorenson’s similarity index indicates the migration of bacterial population from rhizosphere to endosphere. The soil samples shared about 28 to 35 % similarity with different plant compartments viz., root, stem and leaf at both crop stages. The fingerprinting of rhizosphere and endosphere samples would be a useful resource for plant microbe breeding through understanding of the associated microbial community.st