Paper Details

Name: Sumangala.C.H, BharathiPrakash, Rajathadri, Chethanraj, Sathyanarayana, Nithesh, SunitaSalunke- Gawali
Email: bharatiprakash21@gmail.com
Country: India

Year: 2023
Volume: Volume-10, Issue-1 (January-June)
Page Number: 1-6
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.8195054

Fresh water is essential for life. Water sources like icebergs, bogs, ponds, lakes, rivers, streams percolate underground forming ground water. There are chances that the fresh water sources may get contaminated with faecal matter. Escherichia coli is the most common member of faecal coliforms and an indicator of faecal water contamination.
In this study freshwater samples were collected from Mangalore and analysed for the coliform and mainlyE. coli. Dissolved oxygen (DO) content of water was also calculated.The freshwater samples were seeded inEosin Methylene Blue (EMB) and Hicrome Coliform Agar (HCA)to differentiate E.coli from others coliforms. E.coli on EMB gives metallic sheen colonies and blue coloured colonies on HCA.Out of the HCA and EMB Agar, HCAshowed greater number of, E.coli colonies alongwith other coliforms. Lowered DO in the water indicates high amount of microbial activity degrading organic matter. Thus water samples with higher colony count on HCA correlated with the low DO content.Hence the HiCrome Coliform Agar can be used for the selective,rapid and qualitative identification of E. coli from the water samples.