Monitoring efficacy of constructed wetland for\ud treating domestic effluent – microbiological\ud approach

摘要

Water scarcity and elevated potential in wastewater\udtreatment in the last decades raise attention towards\udconstructed wetlands (CWs). The present study was\udcarried out to evaluate the efficacy of CW for faecal\udcoliform (FC) expulsion and to isolate and characterize\udthe microbial communities. Significant differences\udwere observed between influent and effluent microbial\udcounts of vegetated and control cells (without vegetation)\udof wetland. FC reduction ranged from 64% to\ud81%; however, total bacterial, fungal and actinomycetes\udaverage poll ranged from 66.67 X 105 cfu/g to\ud142.67 X 105 cfu/g, 1.67 X 102 cfu/g to 10.33 X 102 cfu/g\udand 16.00 X 103 cfu/g to 53.33 X 103 cfu/g respectively,\udisolated from vegetated and control cells. Results further\udindicated that bacteria were most abundant, followed\udby actinomycetes, whereas the number of fungi\udwas least among three groups of microbes, which\udcould be attributed to wide tolerance to the properties\udof CW. Removal of FC was less apparent initially\udcompared to the later stages of operation, which is of\udconcern for long-term efficiency and stability of wetland.\udAlso, diversity of identified bacterial strains is\udbeneficial for growth and yield enhancement of agriculture crops. The results also demonstrate that CWs\udare the key habitats for bioactive actinomycetes with\udparamount medical, scientific and economic potential\udsignificance globally in general and developing countries\udlike India in particular. Overall, backwash imparts\udthe baseline compilation of CWs for its\udmanagement for sustainable agriculture.