Characterization of Growth-Promoting Activities of Consortia of Chlorpyrifos Mineralizing Endophytic Bacteria Naturally Harboring in Rice Plants—A Potential Bio-Stimulant to Develop a Safe and Sustainable Agriculture

Eighteen pesticide-degrading endophytic bacteria were isolated from the roots, stems, and leaves of healthy rice plants and identified through 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Furthermore, biochemical properties, including enzyme production, dye degradation, anti-bacterial activities, plant-growth-promoting traits, including N-fixation, P-solubilization, auxin production, and ACC-deaminase activities of these naturally occurring endophytic bacteria along with their four consortia, were characterized. Enterobacter cloacae HSTU-ABk39 and Enterobacter sp. HSTU-ABk36 displayed inhibition zones of 41.5 ± 1.5 mm, and 29 ± 09 mm against multidrug-resistant human pathogenic bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and Staphylococcus epidermidis, respectively. FT-IR analysis revealed that all eighteen isolates were able to degrade chlorpyrifos pesticide. Our study confirms that pesticide-degrading endophytic bacteria from rice plants play a key role in enhancing plant growth. Notably, rice plants grown in pots containing reduced urea (30%) mixed with either endophytic bacterial consortium-1, consortium-2, consortium-3, or consortia-4 demonstrated an increase of 17.3%, 38.6%, 18.2%, and 39.1% yields, respectively, compared to the control plants grown in pots containing 100% fertilizer. GC–MS/MS analysis confirmed that consortia treatment caused the degradation of chlorpyrifos into different non-toxic metabolites, including 2-Hydroxy-3,5,6 trichloropyridine, Diethyl methane phosphonate, Phorate sulfoxide, and Carbonochloridic. Thus, these isolates could be deployed as bio-stimulants to improve crop production by creating a sustainable biological system.