ABSTRACT

Actinomycetes are the group of Gram positive filamentous bacteria which are ubiquitous various natural and man-made environments. The aim of the study was to determine the cellulolytic and antimicrobial activities of actinomycetes isolated from fish pond effluents. A total of five (5) different fish pond effluents were collected from different fish pond location in Michael Okpara University of Agriculture, Umudike and was labelled before transporting it to the Laboratory of analysis.  1ml of fish pond effluent sample was spread plated on the surface Actinomycete medium. Standard microbiological technique was employed to show the  morphology and biochemical characterization of isolated organisms. The cellulolytic activity of isolates from the result obtained it revealed cellulolytic activity was high (+++) in Streptomyces (H2) than H1 Actinomyces  (++) which had moderate activity. The antimicrobial activity of isolates against different pathogenic bacteria. From the results obtained it showed that H2 Streptomyces showed high degree of activity against E.coli (17mm) while H2 Actinomycetes had a low degree of activity against Pseudomonas aeruginosa (0mm). In conclusion Therefore isolation and purification of economically important secondary metabolites from actinomycetes from fish pond effluents and characterization of the bioactive compounds is a challenging solution for exploring antimicrobial compounds from natural sources. Many commercially important bioactive compounds, antibiotics, other bio-agents have been discovered from actinomycetes isolated from soil. Streptomyces sp. obtained from fish pond effluents have been reported to exhibit antagonistic efficiency against bacterial pathogen therefore,  further study is needed to characterize the bioactive compounds responsible for antimicrobial activity.