Fractal analysis of colony margins as an aid for screening freshwater yeast cultures for bioclarification of turbid polluted water resources

Abstract

In Iron ore mining areas of Goa, water resources are polluted due to high turbidity and mineral colloids. For bioclarification of the turbidity, we need to identify some promising property of strains by which the strains of freshwater yeasts can be screened. This work presents a screening of freshwater yeast cultures, based on the complexity of colony margins. We performed screening of the wild aquatic yeasts isolated from different fresh water bodies of Goa on 2nd, 4th and 6th day of incubation respectively. Colony margins of sixteen different strains were studied for their fractality indexes and on comparison significant differences were observed among them. We report comparative analysis of five representative strains in this paper. Particularly strain Bchlm-1-2 showed high fractality index approximately 1410 on 6th day of incubation. This work provides quantitative scoring system of the morphological behavior of large number of strains. Our approach has the potential to improve the accuracy and speed to quantify and compare large number of isolates on the basis of their colony margins.