An insight on the plankton population of river Sutlej along its course in Punjab, India

摘要

Present study was carried out to study the plankton diversity of river Sutlej during February 2018-June 2019along its course of flow in Punjab. Water samples were collected (in triplicate) for studying the plankton population qualitativelyand quantitatively from four selected sites i.e. S-1: river Sutlej in Ropar at Headwork, S-2: river Sutlej before the confluence ofBuddha Nallah at Phillaur, S-3: river Sutlej after the confluence of Buddha Nallah at Wallipur and S-4: Harike-Pattan whereriver Sutlej meets with Beas at two monthly intervals. The present studies revealed that the phytoplankton population of riveris dominated by chlorophycea followed by bacillariophycea, cyanophycea and euglenophycea while as zooplankton population isdominated by rotifer followed by crustaceans and protozoa populations. We further found that population of total phytoplanktonand zooplankton were found to be lower at S-3 as compared to the other sites of study. Higher population of Cyanophyceae wererecorded at S-2 hinting towards higher organic pollution load due to the direct discharge of phillaur sewage at S-2 whereas theBacillariophycea population was recorded higher at S-3 indicating the higher industrial and sewage pollution at this site.Among the zooplanktons, rotifers were found to be higher at S-1, whereas S-2, S-3 and S-4 were dominated by Crustacean andProtozoa populations.