B anana a member of genus Musa, family Musaceae is one of the most important fruit crop grown in the world in the context of nutritional point of view. Banana comes in a variety of sizes and colors when ripe, including yellow, purple, red and in popular culture and commerce, “banana” usually refers to soft, sweet “dessert” bananas. Owing to its greater socio economic significance, multifaced and virtues of plant it is rightly referred as apple of paradise, Adam’s fig, Kalpatru and Kalpavriksha. Banana is the most nourishing fruit, contains vitamins, minerals and several medicinal properties and it is rich source of energy, low in protein, fat contents provides a balance diet. Centre core of the pseudo stem and male bud are good for making delicious cuisines. Several processed products like chips, banana fig, soft drink, RTS, beer, vine, alcohol, vinegar, powder, jam, confectionaries and halwa are made from the fruits. The plant along with its bunch used extensively in all auspicious occasions such as weeding, festival and for Members of the Research Forum Associated Authors: 1 ICAR-Regional Centre-NEH, Mizoram Centre, KOLASIB (MIZORAM) INDIA 2 ICAR-RC for NEH, Sikkim Centre, GANGTOK (SIKKIM) INDIA 3 Krisi Vigyan Kendra, MAMIT (MIZORAM) INDIA 4 Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Institute of Agricultural Sciences, Banaras Hindu University, VARANASI (U.P.) INDIA HIND AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH AND TRAINING INSTITUTE worship (Radha and Mathew, 2007). Banana requires large quantity of chemical fertilizers for its growth and development moreover, such chemical fertilizers pose a health hazards and microbial population problem in soil besides being quite expensive and making the cost of production high in such a situation the bio fertilizer play a major role (Tiwari et al., 1998) for fruit traits in banana, moreover, bio fertilizers on application remain in soils, multiply and keep benefiting the growing crops. They do not get depleted as in the case of chemical fertilizers and, therefore, if the optimum soil condition prevail, population of added micro-organisms build up and frequent application of bio fertilizers can be avoided (Sharma, 2002). Use of bio fertilizers for crop production is gaining momentum, as they are environmentally safe when compared to chemical fertilizers. The availability and uptake of inorganic nutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium by plant influenced by micro-organisms that are involved in the uptake of essential Effect of bio-fertilizers on biological nitrogen fixation of banana cv. GIANT CAVENDISH SANTOSH KUMAR 1 , K.A. PATHAK 2 , K. KISHORE 3 , R. SHUKLA, S.S. SOLANKEY AND D.K. SINGH 4 Article history : Received : 18.02.2013 Revised : 30.08.2013 Accepted : 15.09.2013 Author for correspondence : S.S. SOLANKEY Department of Horticulture, Bihar Agricultural College, Bihar Agricultural University, Sabour, BHAGALPUR (BIHAR) INDIA Email : shashank.hort@gmail.com ABSTRACT : The effect of bio-fertilizer was studied in banana accessions intensively collected from ICAR Research Complex for NEH Region, Mizoram Centre, Kolasib, Mizoram during 2009-2010. To assess the efficacy of different bio-fertilizer viz., Azospirillium, Azotobacter and phosphorus solubilizing bacteria (PSB) either alone or in combination was applied 20g per plant with recommended dose of FYM. The six treatments were arranged in a Randomized Block Design in three replications and spaced at 2.5 × 2.5 m in order to study its effect on growth, yield and quality attributing traits. All the characters were significantly increased except number of suckers and number of leaves due to application of each of the two-bio fertilizers either separately or in combination. Moreover in combination of Azotobacter + PSB 20g per plant showed that more effective than either combination or in separately of another bio-fertilizers. This might be due to because biological nitrogen fixation depends appreciably on the available form of phosphorus. So the combined inoculation of nitrogen fixers and PSB may benefit the plant better (by providing both nitrogen as well as phosphorus) than either alone. KEY WORDS : Bio- fertilizer, Nitrogen fixation, Azospirillium, Azotobacter, PSB, Banana, HOW TO CITE THIS ARTICLE : Kumar, Santosh, Pathak, K.A., Kishore, K., Shukla, R., Solankey, S.S. and Singh, D.K. (2013). Effect of bio-fertilizers on biological nitrogen fixation of banana cv. GIANT CAVENDISH. Asian J. Hort., 8(2) : 436- 439. Research Paper THEASIAN JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE Volume 8 | Issue 2 | December, 2013 | 436-439