Environmental problems caused by cyanobacterial blooms in eutrophic lakes, rivers and drinking water reservoirs have been increasingly documented. Toxins and Odor substances produced by cyanobacterial blooms, directly threading to human health through drinking water systems, have been attracted more attention and extensively studied. In the past decades, the cyanobacterial blooms mainly dominated by Microcystis spp. have been frequently found in large shallow lakes from the eastern and southern China. Water bloom forming cyanobacteria include a diverse group of organisms with more than 40 genera.

This presentation will focus on diversity studies including morphological and phylogenetic analyses in several major groups of water bloom forming cyanobacteria of Chinese waters: Unicellular Microcystis, non-heterocystous filamentous Planktothrix/ Planktothricoides, heterocystous Anabaena/Aphanizomenon, Cylindrospermopsis/ Raphidiopsis. The distributing pattern of morphotypes and genoptypes of these water bloom forming cyanobacteria in the Chinese large lakes will be demonstrated. Geosmin and MIB related genes have been extensively characterized and evolutionary relationship based on these genes among the bloom forming cyanobacteria from China will be discussed, and these two genes based molecular monitoring tools was also developed.