ABSTRACT
The diversity and phylogeny of bacterial populations in soil samples collected from various locations of Western Ghats were studied by using both cultivation-dependent and cultivation-independent methods by various research groups. Based on their sequence similarity, these isolates were found to be distributed in different genera belonging to Proteobacteria, Firmicutes, Actinobacteria, and Bacteroidetes etc. Most of these microbes are of unique nature and could have been exploited for the production of value-added products, such as industrial enzymes, bioactive molecules, and platform chemicals. This chapter addresses the commercial exploitation of the bacterial diversity of Western Ghats.
