Abstract The main focus of this study was to isolate some antibiotic producing actinomycetes The number of actinomycetes colonies in each dilution
plate did not necessarily follow the 10-fold serial dilution
pattern as expected, but varied across each dilution and
colony type (table 2). A total of 79 colonies were counted
across all plates (table 2). Colony type 1 (CT 1) was found to
have the highest colony forming units of 1.08 × 105 per gram
of soil (CFU/g). The lowest CFU/g obtained was 1.35 × 104
and was recorded in CT 6. The total CFU/g for all colony
types was calculated as 3.56 × 105. The diversity index
(Shannon’s index) was calculated as 1.62 and evenness as
0.91. In comparison with a parallel experiment (class sample)
performed on the same soil (bare sandy soil), the highest
CFU/g recorded was (6.4 × 107) and the richness in the group
ranged from 6 to 10 (table 3). Therefore this implies that the
actinomycetes CFU/g ranged from hundredths of thousands
(105) to tenths of millions (107) (table 3).