Investigation of different methods in siderophore measurement in indigenous Fluorescent Pseudomonads

Fluorescent pseudomonads produced a variety of siderophores in which the pyoverdine type siderophore is the main one. These bacteria employ siderophores to increase availability of Iron for their own and plants consumption. Siderophores have a special role in the biological control activity of these bacteria against plant pathogens.
Siderophore production was checked in 21 indigenous Pseudomonads strains, two reference strains and one Bacillus sp. strain by qualitative CAS-Agar, semi-quantitative CAS-AD and quantitative spectrophotometric methods.
Colony growth in some of isolates such as UTPF93 has been inhibited in CAS-Agar method because of the detergent compound HDTMA. So, siderophore production was low in these strains. All strains produced siderophore by the CAS-AD method. The highest and the lowest siderophore production were recorded in UTPF76 and UTPF45 with 1.005 and 0.0026 mM of defroxamin equivalent, respectively. The Pyoverdine mutant strain MPFM1 and the Bacillus sp. strain also produce low amounts of siderophore in two recent methods. So, these methods are non-selective to the type of siderophore. In quantitative method only Pyoverdine type siderophore was detectable and the strains MPFM1 and Bacillus sp. did not produce this type of siderophore. The highest amount of pyoverdine was recorded in non-indigenous strain 7NSK2 with 625.29 mM/L followed by UTPF65, UTPF81 and UTPF87.
Discussion and CAS-AD was the best method for total siderophore measurement and spectrophotometric was the accurate and efficient method for detection of pyoverdine type siderophore in fluorescent pseudomonads.