Studies on Cyanobacterial Biodiversity in Paper Mill and Pharmaceutical Industrial Effluents

Abstract

A thorough knowledge of the physical, chemical and biological characteristics of an industrial waste is a crucial requirement for any attempt at chemical and/or biological treatment of the waste. Hence the present study was aimed to assess the physicochemical characteristics and cyanobacterial study on different industrial effluents. In the present study, effluents from two different places, paper mill and pharmaceutical industries, were selected to determine the cyanobacterial biodiversity. It was revealed that the physicochemical characteristics of both effluents studied were more or less similar. Total 25 species of cyanobacteria were found to be distributed in two different effluents in which twenty two were found in paper mill and fourteen were in pharmaceutical industries. Some of the species of cyanobacteria like Microcystis aeruginosa, Oscillatoria curviceps, O. princeps, Phormidium ambiguum, P. corium and few more were recorded in both the effluent analyzed. The dominant genus was recorded to be Oscillatoria and among themselves its six species were recorded. The abundance of cyanobacteria in these effluents was due to favorable contents of organic matter, rich calcium and nutrients such as nitrates and phosphates with less dissolved oxygen. Therefore, it can clearly stated that physicochemical characters together with biological monitoring of industrial effluents provided converging lines of evidences for evaluation of polluted habitats in this case as in some other studies reported by many researcher. This type of study would be valuable for future pollution abatement programmes.