The underexplored microbial biodiversity of southern forest ranges in Kerala may have potent microorganism producing enzymes of industrial importance. Keeping this in mind, search for bacteria from forest regions near Agasthyamala in Kerala has been attempted in the present study. The newly isolated 18 cultures were showing clear zones near the bacterial growth on the media screened. Of the different cultures the UC A 31 showed the highest xylanase, CMCase and FPase activities. The 16 S rRNA

more »

... uencing and subsequent sequence alignment and phylogenetic tree building studies showed the possibility of the bacterium belonging to the genus Streptomyces. Maximum xylanase production occurred in cost effective method of using wheat bran as carbon source which showed three times higher production of that in xylan and xylose containing media.