Original Articles: 2018 Vol: 10 Issue: 5
Fungal biodiversity study of varied soil samples collected from two college campus of Puducherry city
Abstract
Soil fungi play an important role as major decomposers in the soil ecosystem and fertile the soil which in turn helps the proper growth of plant communities. They also provide mankind with very useful pharmaceutical products, such as antibiotics and other valuable products, including organic acids, enzymes, pigments and secondary metabolites. In our present study, it was an attempt to isolate and enumerate soil fungi from two different college campuses in order to record their abundance per gram soil as well as to find out their source of origin in the soil. Penicillium citrinum was found as the dominant fungus in its abundance among all the fungi isolated from soil samples followed by Aspergillus niger, but Aspergillus niger was considered as universal since it was recorded from all the soil samples of both the colleges and Aspergillus sp., Fusarium sp. and Verticillium spp were also isolated too. The soil samples clearly indicated the presence of Aspergillus niger, Aspergillus flavus and Penicillium spp and Mycelia sterilia forms. Fungi like Fusarium sp., Doratomyces sp., Verticillium sp. and sterile forms were rarely recorded. Deuteromycotina fungi were dominant followed by Zygomycotina and a few were under Ascomycotina, but no fungi were recorded from Basidiomycotina group. In fungal composition, the similarity coefficient value between KMCPGS and TAC was found to be the maximum (87.5%) since their common fungi were more in comparison to other soil samples.