Diversity of Soil Algae from Vegetable Crop Fields of Cachar District, Assam, India

The present work deals with the study of distributional pattern and soil algal diversity of vegetable crop fields of Cachar district, Assam (India). A total of 50 algal species belonging to 27 genera spread over Chlorophyceae, Cyanophyceae and Bacillariophyceae families were enumerated. Of these, 19 species belong to Cyanophyceae, 5 to Chlorophyceae and 26 species to Bacillariophyceae. Soil physicochemical analysis reveals the soil of the study sites is slightly acidic in nature with different textural type. Higher number of species was d at Bagpur. Nostoc, Anabaena, Oscillatoria, Chroococcus, Haematococcus, Chlorella, Scenedesmus, Navicula, Cymbella and Nitzschia were the most dominant species. The highest Shannon diversity index (H= 2.69) was in Bagpur with Simpsons dominance index 0.09 and Peilou's evenness index 0.87 in May 2013. The pH and conductivity of soil were significantly correlated with the diversity indices.