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Cyanobacterial strains were isolated, and identified from rhizospheric soil and plant parts of rice varieties from Ludhiana, Punjab during kharif 2018. Out of the total 18 strains, 16 were heterocystous and 2 were non-hetercocystous. Seven were isolated from rice variety PB-1121 while 11 were from variety Parman-126. These belonged to four genera, Nostoc (13), Anabaena and Phormidium (2 each); and Trichormus (one).These were characterized for cell dry weight, pigments and total soluble proteins which showed a significant variation. Pigments ranged from 1.51 μg/ml to 11.63 μg/ml (chlorophyll), 0.41 μg/ml to 11.06 μg/ml (carotenoids), 1.13 μg/ml to 26.28 μg/ml (phycocyanin), 0.15 μg/ml to 33.23 μg/ml (phycoerythrin), 0.16 μg/ml to 11.18 μg/ml (allophycocyanin). Total phycobili proteins varied from a highest of 54.31 μg/ml to the lowest of 2.95 μg/ml, whereas, total soluble proteins ranged as 0.29 mg/ml to 0.70 mg/ml. Nitrogenase activity was measured as Acetylene Reduction Assay and this parameter also varied amongst the strains. Extracellular ammonia release varied as lowest of 11.10 μmole NH4 +/ml to the highest of 229.70 μmole NH4 +/ml, whereas, indole acetic acid production ranged from 7.45 μg/ml to 66.00 μg/ml.On the basis of efficient plant growth promoting parameters, these cyanobacterial strains can be studied for their possible positive influence on the performance of rice crop, which may, in turn, help in nitrogen economy after testing under pot culture and field evaluations as per required procedure and guidelines.

The present study aims towards the investigation of lipid production capability of microalgae isolated from coal mining site. The biomass production and lipid productivity of the isolate was studied under the influence of different bicarbonate, nitrate, and phosphate concentration. The production of biomass was observed to be highest at 8.4, 0.75, and 0.06 gL−1 of bicarbonate, nitrate, and phosphate concentrations. The role of bicarbonate supplementation under different nutritional starvation conditions viz. N+ P+, N– P–, N+ P–, and N– P+ with and without sodium bicarbonate respectively was also evaluated. Addition of sodium bicarbonate increased the lipid content to 35% of dry cell weight (DCW) and carbohydrate content to 52% of DCW under the nitrate and phosphate nutritional starvation conditions. The results revealed that the microalgae grown in sodium bicarbonate can be a promising feedstock for biodiesel production. © 2017 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 36: 1498–1506, 2017

The dyed fabrics from textile industries occupy a significant share in the global economy with a world-wide market. Conventional natural dyes were gradually substituted by synthetic dyes in the wake of burgeoning demand for coloured textiles. Textile dyes are of several types depending on the core chemical structure which determines the solubility, colour and dye class. Often, dyes require treatment with mordants to fix the colour to the fabric and develop different hues. The textile treated dye baths contain residual dye moieties, mordants as well as other chemicals from the overall textile dyeing and finishing processes. For such effluents, proper treatment is a mandate to alleviate dyes associated colour, chemical compounds and organics from the wastewaters prior to release into watercourses. The challenge of textile dye effluents to meet the regulatory limits becomes more problematic when the textile industries are dominated by the unorganised small/medium scale industries and unauthorised sectors. The present review details on the genesis of Indian textile industries, dye types, dyeing process and the impact of dye effluents on health and environment along with a case study. Besides, strategies to replace chemical dyes with natural equivalents and state-of-art textile dye effluent treatment techniques are elaborated.

The early excitement of industrialization during the twentieth century and unprecedented population rise have now compelled us to think about developing environmental remediation strategies on a priority basis to save the basic essential components of life. Understanding the impact of dyes and dye intermediates which have been the major component of industrial pollutants in the environment is the prime need, to reclaim the pristine environment. Physical and chemical environmental cleanup technologies developed for dye and textile effluents are proven to be expensive and energy consuming, often generate toxic by-products, and more importantly are faced with limited success in a narrower scope. Consequently, the need for an alternate approach has led to the development of self-sustainable, greener biological methods (i.e., bioremediation). It offers a great advantage of astonishing catabolic diversity of the innate microbial population inhabiting the polluted environment. Factors like geological aspects, climate, soil and water characteristics, waste and disposal facilities, etc. play a vital role in the success of different technologies (including bioremediation). Besides chemical structure, degree of recalcitrance, toxicity, and bioavailability of dye molecules are considered significant parameters for their treatments. In this review, an attempt has been made to understand the complexities and constraints of existing technologies and few optimistic scenarios to improve and develop new methodologies for treatment of industrial effluents from dye and textile industries.

The conventional methods for industrial wastewater treatments are now facing challenges to cope up with the emergence of new pollutants, a growing population, rapid industrialization, and most importantly shrinking freshwater resources. Moreover, in many countries the aging of infrastructure is adding to the problem. Therefore a need of the upcoming decade is to develop the advanced treatment technologies for the effective removal of potentially toxic compounds which could not be eliminated by traditional processes. Emerging bioremediation technologies, such as microbial fuel cells, bioelectrochemical systems, processes based on nano(bio)technology, natural treatment systems (viz., constructed wetlands), integrated technologies involving physicochemical/biological methods, have shown effective results at lab- and pilot-level studies. Many of these technologies are in their developmental stages, and require significant improvements in process efficiency, economics, and energy conservation. They have to meet the existing challenges and need to be refined in order to integrate them into better performing sustainable universal systems.

The organisms on Earth always live in a multidimensional chemical and physical niche space. Many discoveries in the last century have tremendously expanded the range of “habitable” niches, and the environment which was considered as “nonhabitable” was found to be viable. The extremophilic microorganisms are constantly subjected to extreme environments, where they often experience high and low temperatures, high salt concentrations, low nutrient availability, abnormal atmospheric pressure, high amount of natural radiations, and other extremities, which is difficult for human and other eukaryotes to survive. To sustain the life in these environments, the indigenous microorganisms have evolved number of adaptation mechanisms with regard to metabolic activities, survival, perpetuation, and protection strategies. Various studies have provided insightful observations about extremophiles; however, advance genomics, proteomics, and sequencing technologies have started revealing the most astonishing features of life under extreme conditions.

In spite of its importance in nation-wide conservation planning, comprehensive information on geographic distribution of threatened plants in India is lacking. Even the threat status of these plants is ambiguous and the country’s effort to conserve them is not widely known. A critical analysis of these aspects is essential for identifying gaps in threatened plant conservation. Keeping these in view, we present a review of the existing knowledge on geographic distribution pattern of threatened plants of India, their threat status, and conservation action undertaken to recover these species. Using the available data, we unravel patterns of distribution of these threatened plants in different states of India. When ranking of the families was done based on the total number of species under different threat categories, Orchidaceae (644), Fabaceae (185), Poaceae (164), Rubiaceae (103), Asteraceae (88), Euphorbiaceae (72), Asclepiadaceae (62) and Acanthaceae (60) constituted more than half of the total threatened plant species of India. A review on conservation efforts so far undertaken in different parts of the country revealed that the biodiversity-rich phytogeographic regions such as the Himalayas, North East India, and Andaman and Nicobar Islands had lesser conservation efforts in comparison to the Western Ghats, Vindhyas and Peninsular regions of India. The skewed distribution of threatened plants in different states did not truly reflect their absolute presence or absence; rather it is the result of incomplete survey because of the difficult geomorphological and associated geo-climatic conditions, tough terrain and remote locations. In addition, the current data on threatened plants suffer from methodological shortcomings such as classification without using the population data that are so crucial in modern day threat classification, and lack of long-term observational data. The review emphasizes the use of modern tools such as ecological niche modelling for population inventory, area of occupancy and extent of occurrence, and trends in population size and regeneration for precise threat classification conforming to globally accepted methods (e.g. IUCN version 3.1). The works undertaken through the support of Department of Biotechnology, GoI for conservation of 156 threatened plant species under different disciplines of conservation biology during the past three decades have also been compiled and reviewed. A successfully tested protocol following an integrated approach for threatened species conservation is recommended for future conservation action.

In hard-rock terrain under semi-arid climatic zone of western Rajasthan, prospective groundwater zones are poorly defined. The area of Sirohi district studied is regarded as a critical zone for tubewell siting. The present study involves delineation of lineaments on spaceborne and airborne data and their identification in field. Lineaments are identified with surface and subsurface geological features for selection of drilling sites. The study has resulted in 100 percent high-yielding exploratory wells in the area. Identical results obtained in their respective observation wells reaffirm utility of the approach adopted.

As previously work has been done on the isolation of free living nitrogen fixers from tea rhizosphere of South Assam, this edition was an additional work for verifying the nitrogen fixing ability of an isolate was an attempt to understand the nitrogenase activity of the isolate. In this paper an isolate has been isolated in a nitrogen free medium, it's morphological and biochemical assessments have been made earlier. And here its nitrogen fixation ability was depicted after doing Acetylene reduction Assay. From that a clear idea of its nitrogen fixing ability has been drawn, even if the capacity is low.