Skip to content
Research Article Open access CC BY 4.0

Potassium Releasing Bacteria for Unlocking Soil Potassium- A Way Forward for Judicious Use of Chemical Fertilizers

Jeberlin Prabina Bright, Andrea Susan Baby, Sugitha Thankappan, Aniya Susan George, Hemant S. Maheshwari, Rajinimala Nataraj, Shakina Judson, Asish K. Binodh

International Journal of Plant & Soil Science · pp. 49–61 · Published 19 May 2022

10.9734/ijpss/2022/v34i1931088

Abstract

Potassium (K) is one of the essential macronutrients required for the plants and its availability to plants is hampered due to its fixation with other ions. The Potassium Releasing Micro-organisms (KRMs) present in the soil are capable of converting the fixed form of potassium into an available form of K for the plants to uptake. Most commonly present potash releasing bacteria in rhizosphere soil belong to phylum Firmicutes, Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria. These microbes produce organic acids, siderophores, biofilms for converting the insoluble K into a soluble form. They also produce some of the plant growth hormones, apart from providing abiotic and biotic stress resistance which results in enhanced yield and quality traits of the crop. The use of KRMs as bio-fertilizer could decrease the level of application of chemical fertilizers and thereby reduce the excess accumulation of potassium in the soil. The presence of sufficient numbers of Potash Releasing Bacteria (KRB) in the soil would ease the potassium transformation processes.

Potash releasing microbe organic acids rhizosphere siderophore sustainable agriculture

Cited by 4

Multi-potent rhizobacteria enhance banana growth and reduce chemical fertilizer input

Jeberlin Prabina Bright, Kavitha Chinnasamy, Hemant S. Maheshwari · Frontiers in Microbiology · 2025

Showing 3 of 4 known citations — external sources report more than can currently be individually listed.

Article metrics

Real usage data collected on this platform.

0

Page views

0

PDF downloads

0

Outbound clicks

4

Citations

Views by country

Approximate, from request IP at view time — not citizenship or institution. Countries with fewer than 5 views are grouped as "Other".

No views recorded yet.

Traffic sources

Referring site, by host.

No traffic recorded yet.

Views and downloads exclude known bots/crawlers. Citations combines this platform's own DOI-resolved index with each external source's own reported total — see Cited by above for individually listed citing works. Last refreshed 0 seconds ago.