ANALYSIS OF THE SOURCE WATER OF THE VRISHABHAVATHI RIVER IN BENGALURU CITY: COMPARISON WITH BOTTLED GANGA WATER
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Abstract
Water is essential for life but increasing urbanization, pollution and poor wastewater management have severely degraded river systems of major rivers as well as smaller urban rivers in India. Contamination from sewage, heavy metals and pesticides render such water unpotable (Singh et al., 2022). Interestingly, the Ganga shows unique self-cleaning due to the presence of bacteriophages and bacteriocins (Tyagi and Dubey, 2020). Despite the presence of coliforms even in the headwaters, this water is comparatively safe for consumption due to a high coliphage count. Bengaluru city’s only river – the Vrishabhavathi – is heavily polluted all along its course and has been studied by various groups (Ramachandra et al., 2017; Madhukar and Srikantaswamy, 2013). Yet, the source water at the Sri Dakshinamukha Nanditeertha temple in Malleswaram which is distributed as teertha to devotees, has no microbiological documentation of the water quality.
In this study, source water from Sri Dakshinamukha Nanditeertha temple and bottled Ganga water were analysed for physicochemical properties, bacterial profile, bacteriocins and bacteriophages using standard microbiological and biochemical methods.
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