Page 12 - e-Book

INTRODUCTION

Freshwater algae are the one of most diversified, universal organisms on earth. Micro-
algae offer numerous benefits especially in the health sector as they are good candidates for

anti-cancerous, antimicrobial activities in addition to cholesterol lowering properties. It is
being used in various cosmetics as they have skin protection properties (Kothari et al. 2017).

The culture techniques requires physiological, ecological and taxonomy knowledge of the
algae. The primary steps involved in phycological research and applied commercial aspects,

it is always vital to isolate and develop cultures of micro algal strains of our interest. Sydney

et al. (2019) reported that isolation of potential strains requires screening of strains for
different physico-chemical, and biological attributes that is essential for micro algal

production. India has a large number of PAs under categories II, IV, and VI of International

Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The first and oldest among these is Corbett
National Park, established in 1936. It is also the inaugural site for Project Tiger (1973)

(Badola et al., 2010). Recently, Dahiya et al. (2021) isolated Chlorella sorokiana from
Rishikesh, Uttarakhand. But no studies on isolation of freshwater algae from Jim Corbett

National Park has been done till now. This is the first report of isolation of algal strains from
Jim Corbett National Park. It has rich unexplored sites for algal potentials. This reaserch has

been carried out with the objective to isolate native micro algal species from a variety of

natural water bodies in the Jim Corbett National Park, Uttarakhand for value-added products
potentials.

MATERIALS & METHODS
Study Area

The first and oldest National park of India comes mainly under two different districts
Nainital and Pauri of Uttarakhand. The land has a vast variety of geographical conditions

with altitudes ranging from 400 m -1210 m above mean sea level. The Park (JCNP) is located

between the following geographical coordinates: Latitude 29 ͦ25' N to 29 ͦ40' N and Longitude
78 ͦ5' E to 79 ͦ5' E (https://www.corbett-national-park.com), comprising an area about 1318.54

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km (Corbett: 520.82 km ; 301.18 km Sonanadi Wildlife Sanctuary and Reserve Forests with
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an area of 496.54 km ) (Khanna et al. 2017) (Figure 1).
Altogether 40 freshwater algal samples were collected from 4 sites of JCNP streams,
ditches, canals, dams, spring water in the winter season 2021. These established sampling
stations come under 4 different zones of JCNP such as Jhirna, Durga Devi, Dhikala and

Bijrani zones. GPS Montana 360 was used to assess latitude, longitude and altitude (m) at
each sampling sites [(Table 1); designated S1 to S4)]. Algal samples were collected using the

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