Mountain Top University Library

Antimicrobial agents or antibiotics are the most significant commercially available and utilized secondary metabolites, which are highly produced by the soil microbes which includes bacteria. In this study, bacteria were isolated from a local soil samples using serial dilution and pour plate technique. They were screened against known pathogenic bacteria using perpendicular method.
After primary screening, out of ninety-eight (98) bacteria isolates two bacterial strains (wss8 and pfss11) exhibited antimicrobial activity against some common pathogenic bacteria namely, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Salmonella species. To identify the antimicrobial producing bacteria (wss8 and pfss11), morphological identification was carried out and biochemical tests were performed and it was found that wss8 was Micrococcus luteus and pfss11 was Bacillus subtilis. The present work suggests that soil isolates, having antibiotic producing properties can be utilized commercially after proper standardization.
Keywords: Soil sample, Antibiotic producing microorganisms, antimicrobial activity, biochemical tests, Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus, and Salmonella