*Correspondence: ncsvcbu@gmail.com (Received: June 1, 2020; accepted: July 7, 2020) Citaton: De A, Mukherjee S, Sadhukhan GC, Saha NC. Seasonal Variaton of Culturable Benthic Soil Prokaryotc Microbiota as Potental Fish Pathogens and Probiotcs from an Aquaculture Farm in East Kolkata Wetlands, India. J Pure Appl Microbiol. 2020;14(3):1983-1998. doi: 10.22207/JPAM.14.3.38 © The Author(s) 2020. Open Access. This artcle is distributed under the terms of the Creatve Commons Atributon 4.0 Internatonal License which permits unrestricted use, sharing, distributon, and reproducton in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creatve Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. De et al. | J Pure Appl Microbiol | 14(3):1983-1998 | September 2020 Artcle 6462 | htps://doi.org/10.22207/JPAM.14.3.38 Print ISSN: 0973-7510; E-ISSN: 2581-690X ReseARCh ARtiCle OPeN ACCess www.microbiologyjournal.org 1983 Journal of Pure and Applied Microbiology Seasonal Variaton of Culturable Benthic Soil Prokaryotc Microbiota as Potental Fish Pathogens and Probiotcs from an Aquaculture Farm in East Kolkata Wetlands, india Arijit De 1 , Souryadeep Mukherjee 2 , Gobinda Chandra Sadhukhan 3 and Nimai Chandra Saha 4 * 1 Department of Zoology, Vidyasagar College, Block CL, Plot 3-8 & 44-50, Sector-II, Salt Lake, Kolkata - 700 091, West Bengal, India. 2 Department of Life Sciences, Presidency University, 86/1, College Street, Kolkata - 700 073, West Bengal, India. 3 UGC – HRDC, Jadavpur University, Block - LB, Plot No 8, Sector-III, Salt Lake City, Kolkata - 700 098, West Bengal, India. 4 Fisheries and Ecotoxicology Research Laboratory, Vice Chancellor’s Research Group, Department of Zoology, University of Burdwan, Burdwan - 713 104, West Bengal, India. Abstract Rising demand in the aquaculture sector tends towards fnding innovatve ways to promote beter yield and proftability. Benthic soil microbiota can provide an insight into the potent opportunistc fsh pathogens as well as probiotcs present in the aquaculture system. This study reports the seasonal diversity and abundance of ffeen culturable pathogenic bacterial strains belonging to the genera of Comamonas, Aeromonas, Providencia, Klebsiella, Escherichia, Acinetobacter, Serrata, Stenotrophomonas, Staphylococcus, and Enterobacter along with nine probiotc strains natve to genera of Bacillus and Pseudomonas isolated from an aquaculture farm benthic soil, located in East Kolkata Wetlands, West Bengal, India. Strains are isolated using traditonal microbial culture methods and tested for their antmicrobial susceptbility against commonly available antbiotcs. 16S rDNA analysis was done for the identfcaton of the strains and the establishment of their phylogenetc relatonships. Among the isolates, B. pumilus strain S8 in the pre-monsoon sample, E. coli strain M2aR1 in the monsoon sample, and A. hydrophila strain P6dF1 in the post-monsoon sample were the most abundant having MPN counts of 275±21 x 10 6 CFU/gram dry soil, 278±18 x 10 6 CFU/gram dry soil, and 321±28 x 10 6 CFU/gram dry soil respectvely. Data on the temporal diversity, abundance, and drug- susceptbility of prokaryotc fsh-pathogens and probiotcs can be used to formulate measures for sustainable aquaculture practces with reduced maintenance costs. Keywords: Aquaculture, Fish pathogens, probiotcs, 16S rDNA analysis, Antbiogram