The prokaryotic residents of the Tis solar saltern in the southeast of Iran on the shore of Oman Sea were investigated by the culture-dependent methods. Sequencing of the PCR-amplified fragments of 16S rRNA genes revealed that bacterial populations were related to Actinobacteria, Bacteroidetes, Balneolaeota, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria. They were phylogenetically identified as members of Bacillus (35%), Aliifodinibius (15%), Longibacter (10%), Halomonas (10%), Arthrobacter (5%), Luteimonas (5%), Ornithinibacillus (5%), Rhodovibrio (5%), Staphylococcus (5%),and Tamilnaduibacter (5%). All archaeal isolates were belonged to the order Halobacteriales in the following genera: Haloferax (33%), Haloarcula (27%), Halogeometricum (11%), Halococcus (5%), Halomicroarcula (5%), Halorubrum (5%), Halostagnicola (5%), and Natronoarchaeum (5%). Semi-quantitative evaluation of six hydrolytic enzymes, including amylase, cellulase, lipase, pectinase, protease, and urease among these strains, revealed that urease (47%) and amylase (41%) had the highest production frequency. The average production rates were observed for lipase (25%) and protease (30%), while the pectinase (12%) and cellulase (4%) productions were rare among these halophiles. The most potent bacterial/archaeal strains for the enzymes production were as: Longibacter/Natronoarchaeum (amylase), Bacillus/ non archaeum (cellulase), Tamilnaduibacter/ Haloferax (lipase), Bacillus/ Haloferax (pectinase), Bacillus/ Haloferax (protease), and Staphylococcus/ Halococcus (urease). This first report about the prokaryote populations of the solar salterns in Iran demonstrated its high microbial diversity and potentials for the production of industrially interesting enzymes.

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