Growth responses of aquatic hyphomycetes to different sources of carbon and nitrogen

Abstract

Assessment of different sources of carbon and nitrogen in terms of dry weight biomass of four selected aquatic hyphomycetes viz; Flagellospora penicilloides Ingold, Pestalotiopsis submersus Sati and Tiwari, Tetrachaetum elegans Ingold and Tetracladium marchalianum De Wildeman was made for their nutritional requirements. Eight carbon sources and ten nitrogen sources were singly added to the basal media in order to provide 4g of carbon and 1g of nitrogen per litre of distilled water. Among carbon compounds glucose and sucrose were found to be most suitable sources of carbon for all the four fungal isolates, where as fructose proved good for T. marchalianum, P. submersus and F.penicilloides fairly. Cellulose was found a poor source of carbon for the growth of all these isolates. The inorganic sources of nitrogen were found as good nitrogen sources with preference for ammonium ions. Suitability of amino acids was found variable from species to species for nitrogen. T.elegans and T.marchalianum had their maximum growth in asparagines, whereas, P. submersus had their highest growth in proline. Cysteine was observed as a good source of nitrogen for almost all the fungal isolates used. Anova calculated for these observed data showed significant variations in the dry weight production of different fungal species grown in different sources of carbon and nitrogen(P<0.01).