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

The cultivable portion of microbiota (< 10 %) is not representative of their total phylogenetic diversity. It appeared that the classical chemically synthetic culture media generated low diversity and did not support members of the not-yet cultured communities. We herein proved that plant concentrate (syrups), as well as powder teabags, of clover, wheat, maize and sunflower were nutritionally rich enough to support the in vitro growth of a consortium of pure isolates of Bacillus licheniformis, Klebsialla oxytoca and Pseudomonas putida. The tested plant based culture media were as efficient as the chemically synthetic R2A, diluted NA and CCM culture media. They supported good growth of confined and non-slimy colonies, eliminating the over-riding of æ-colonies of different plant endophytes developed with prolonged incubation time. 16S rRNA gene sequence of clover endophytes of root and leaf indicated that all of the 62 secured isolates , representing all tested culture media, fell into 5 distinct phyla; Firmicutes were the dominant (51.6 %) followed by Alphaproteobacteria and Gammaproteobacteria (19.4 % for either). Furthermore, we provide, for the first time, data on the abundance of culturable Chryseobacterium sp., Cronobacter sp, Enterobacter sp, Escherichia sp, Kosakonia sp, Rhizobium sp and Tsukamurella sp on the tested plant-based culture media, but not on the standard R2A culture medium

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