Isolation and identification of phyllosphere bacteria from three different crops

The phyllosphere represents the habitat provided by the aboveground parts of plants. There have been few studies on the phyllosphere of plants. A large number of microbes are associated with the phyllosphere, where bacteria are the most dominant. The main objective of the present study was to isolate phyllosphere bacteria from three different crops cultivated in the Jaffna district. Phyllosphere bacteria were isolated by washing the host leaf and plating on nutrient agar media. Two different phyllosphere bacteria, namely, Pseudomonas putida and Staphylococcus equorum and two different species of the genus Bacillus (B. cereus and B. pumilus)were isolated from Zea mays. Staphylococcus epidermis and two different species of Bacillus (B. cereus and B. subtilis) were isolated from Solanum lycopersicum. Two different phyllosphere bacteria, namely, Lactobacillus brevis and Micrococcus luteus, and three different species of Bacillus (B. subtilis, B. mycoides and B. licheniformis) were isolated from Brassica oleracea var. capitata. The isolates were identified based on colony morphological characteristics and biochemical tests.