Table 1.

Phenotypic and genotypic characters of Serratia marcescens

Characters	Description
Colony morphology	Round, smooth, convex (2–5 mm dia.) colonies with red pigment
Microscopic features	single Gram -ve short rods with 0.5-0.8 μm dia and 0.9-2.0 μm length
Biochemical characters	Carbohydrate utilization: +ve for dextrose, fructose, mannose, maltose, mannitol, sucrose and trehalose and –ve for arabinose, galactose, rahmnose, raffinose and melibiose
	Enzyme activity: +ve for catalase and oxidase, −ve for lactose and starch hydrolysis
Physiological characters	Temperature tolerance 4–45°C (opt. 25°C), Produces pigment till 35°C, pH tolerance 3–14 (opt. 5–7), salt tolerance up to 20%
Molecular characters	98.8% similarity with Serratia marcescens N4-5
Accessions	Bacterial accession no. MTCC 4822
	Nucleotide sequence no. EF035134