eng Science and Education Publishing Journal of Applied & Environmental Microbiology 2013-12-27 2 1 1 5 10.12691/jaem-2-1-1 JAEM2014211 article B.C. Behera 1 M. Patra 2 S.K. Dutta 3 H.N. Thatoi hn_thatoi@rediffmail.com 4 Department of Biotechnology, North Orissa University, Baripada, India Department of Biotechnology, MITS School of Biotechnology, Bhubaneswar, India Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India Department of Biotechnology, College of Engineering and Technology (BPUT), Bhubaneswar, India This study was conducted to isolate sulphur oxidising bacteria from mangrove soil of Mahanadi river delta, Odisha, India and evaluate their sulphur oxidation ability. Results showed that in total thirty sulphur oxidising bacteria were isolated from six different location of mangrove soil. From the qualitative screening it was found that out of the thirty bacterial isolates, twelve isolates could efficiently reduce the pH of the medium upto 4.2 from the initial pH 8.0. Their sulphate ion production abilities were in the range of 125 mg/ml- 245 mg/ml. Their sulphur oxidase activities were in the range of 11.6 to 126.83 U/ ml/ min. From morphological and biochemical characterisation, most of the isolates were identified as Micrococcus spp., Bacillus spp., Pseudomonas spp. and Klebsiella spp. http://pubs.sciepub.com/jaem/2/1/1/jaem-2-1-1.pdf mangrove forestsulphur oxidising bacteriasulphate ionbiochemical characterisation