The coliform group has been widely used as an indicator of water quality and has historically led to a public health protection concept. Presence of pathogens in drinking water may raise several health problems in humans from mild illnesses to serious waterborne diseases. In spite of several measures taken, water quality is always a pertinent issue prevailing in diverse water systems. So far, coliform contamination and diversity could not be adequately explored as traditionally used culture-dependent methods have a limited capacity to characterize microbiota from their respective sources. The study was designed for assessment of microbial diversity by culture-independent approaches placing emphasis on exploring the total coliform diversity in two drinking water reservoirs, Raman Pahad and Koilsagar of Mahabubnagar district, Telangana, India. Principal analysis based on 16S rRNA gene clone libraries revealed that Raman Pahad library clones belonged to genus Enterobacter (41.5%), followed by Citrobacter (25.03%), Klebsiella (17.86%), Escherichia (12.20%), and the least being Hafnia (3.39%). The clones in Koilsagar belonged to genus Enterobacter (46.42%) as the most predominant, followed by Citrobacter (32.14%) and Escherichia (21.42%). Comparatively, Enterobacter was observed to be the most predominant (representing 50%) of the total clones in both reservoirs.

大肠菌群已被广泛用作水质指标，并在历史上导致了公共卫生保护的概念。从轻度疾病到严重的水传播疾病，饮用水中病原体的存在可能会给人类带来一些健康问题。尽管采取了多种措施，但水质始终是各种水系统中普遍存在的相关问题。到目前为止，由于传统上使用的依赖于培养物的方法从各自来源鉴定微生物群的能力有限，因此无法充分探讨大肠菌的污染和多样性。该研究旨在通过不依赖培养的方法评估微生物多样性，重点是探索印度特兰加纳邦Mahahubnagar区的两个饮用水水库Raman Pahad和Koilsagar的总大肠菌群多样性。肠杆菌（41.5％），其次是柠檬酸杆菌（25.03％），克雷伯菌（17.86％），大肠埃希菌（12.20％），最少的是哈夫尼亚（3.39％）。Koilsagar中的克隆最主要是肠杆菌属（46.42％），其次是柠檬酸杆菌（32.14％）和大肠埃希氏菌（21.42％）。相比之下，在两个水库中，肠杆菌被认为是总克隆中最主要的（占50％）。