Thesis (M.Sc.) - Cairo University - Faculty of Agriculture - Department of Microbiology

El-Salam canal water is planned to cultivate an acreage of 400,000 acrelocated in north Sinai. Since this water supply is the mixture of Nile and drainage waters (in ratio 1: 1), monitoring of the chemical and bacteriological agents that might seriously reflect on the quality of the agricultural products and consequently on the human health is indispensable. Chemical (pH, EC, DO, BOD, COD, NH4, NO2, NO3, Ca, Mg, Na, K, SAR, Cd, Cu, Fe, Zn) and bacteriological (total bacteria, total and faecal coliforms) analyses were related to the permissible limits of FAO, WHO and Mediterranean countries. Representatives of pathogen and PGPR isolates were secured from the canal water and rhizospheres of some plants cultivated in El-Qantara Sharq fields irrigated with such water. Based on biochemical properties and 16S rRNA gene sequencing, the pathogens were identified as Escherichia fergusonii, Klebsiella pneumoniae and Shigella sonnei while PGPR were belonging to Bacillus altitudinis, Brevibacillus brevis, Paenibacillus xylanexedens and Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. These strains did possess the ability to produce the plant growth accelerating compounds, abscisic acid (15.0 {u2013} 45.0 æg/100ml), cytokinins (1.2 {u2013} 90.2 æg/100ml), gibberellins (2.7 {u2013} 4.0 mg /100ml), indole acetic acid (73.0 {u2013} 203.0 æg/100ml), and polysaccharides (1.1 {u2013} 5.6mg/ml). Adopting the agar diffusion method, they successfully antagonized the pathogen E. fergusonii in nutrient culture media (pH, 7.0) containing glucose (19 - 29 mm, inhibition zone dia.), L-glutamic (20 {u2013} 35 mm), with or without 1.5% NaCl (16 {u2013} 34 mm), and incubated at 30oC for 24hr (19 {u2013} 29 mm) for 48 hr (24 {u2013} 33 mm)

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