Microbiological Media from Temple Waste: An Ecofriendly Approach of Waste Management

The temple wastes consist of vegetable material (mainly flowers, leaves, fruits, sugar, jaggery, etc.), milk and milk products, grains and water most of which are biodegradable and contain elements required for growth of microorganisms. Temple wastes are released in water bodies or dumped on the available places of land creating severe environmental pollution and health hazards, hence, it was thought to attempt use temple waste for preparation of microbiological media to cultivate common microorganisms in the microbiological laboratories. In the present study, temple waste extract was used to prepare microbiological nutrient media for cultivation of common bacteria (at pH 7.4 of medium) like Bacillus subtilis, Bacillus megaterium and Staphylococcus aureus, and fungi (at pH 5.4 of medium) like Aspergillus niger, Penicillium chrysogenum (molds), Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Torulla (yeasts). For bacteria, the standard control medium used for comparison was nutrient agar, while for fungi it was Sabouraud's agar. The results were highly encouraging where more luxuriant growth of both bacteria and fungi was obtained on the temple waste microbiological media in comparison to standard controlled media. Thus, temple waste based microbiological nutrient media can be used to cultivate common microorganisms, which will be highly economical as compared to costly standard and commercial microbiological media.