INTRODUCTION Diesel fuel is the common term for the distillate of crude fuel oil sold for use in motor vehicles that use the compression ignition engine named for its inventor. The major cause of increasing carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere is excessive consumption of fossil fuels, for example, petroleum, coal, and natural gases. Moreover, excessive consumption of fossil fuel causes not only global warming but also creating global economic problems. Biodiesel is an alternative to diesel obtained from plant, animals and limitations of these sources led to finding of oleaginous microorganisms that include bacteria and yeast. Oleaginous yeast have their own importance with respect to lipid accumulation and conversion to biodiesel. An attempt has been made in this research article to enumerate oleaginous yeast from dairy environmental samples. Oleaginous yeast species are an alternative for the production of lipids or triacylglycerides (TAGs). These yeasts are usually nonpathogenic and able to store TAGs ranging from 20 % to 70 % of their cell mass depending on culture conditions. TAGs originating from oleaginous yeasts can be used as the so-called second-generation biofuels, which are based on non-food competing “waste carbon sources” (Lamers, 2016). Vickers et al. (2017) stated that oleaginous yeasts are advantageous because they can quickly grow to high densities with a high lipid content and their cultures can utilize a large number of renewable substrates and inexpensive materials like food wastes, make oleaginous yeasts economically interesting. Oleaginous yeasts predominantly belong to the genera Rhodosporidium, Cryptococcus, Rhodotorula, Yarrowia, Lipomyces, and Trichosporon (Athenaki et al., 2018 and Blomqvist et al., 2018). Yeast isolates obtained from soil (agricultural, orchards, milk collection area), plant surfaces (leaves, flowers and fruits), waste oils from traditional oil milling houses and dairy products (cheese, milk and yoghurt), fermented foods, samples from fruit surfaces, tabletop swabs, sugar cane juice, sago effluent were screened for lipid accumulation by staining the cells of using Sudan III or Sudan Black (Jiru et al., 2016; Arous et al., 2017a, Vincent et al., 2018; Khobragade et al., 2020). Few authors have used Nile red stain to screen the cells of isolated yeast colonies with the help of flourescent microscope (Patel et al., 2019; Bardhan et al., 2020). MATERIALS AND METHODS The samples such as - soil, dung, feed, fodder, silage and sewage water were collected from Department of Instructional Livestock and Farm Complex, College of Veterinary Science, KVAFSU, Hebbal, Bengaluru. All the samples collected were serially diluted in sterile phosphate buffer and pour plated the required dilutions using molten MEA medium adjusted to pH 3.5 using 10 % filter sterile lactic acid and incorporated Sudan black (0.08 %) of 0.2 ml maintained at 47 º - 50 ºC of 10 -15 ml added, mixed gently and incubated after solidification at 30 ºC for 5 days for general yeast and oleaginous yeast, respectively. The black coloured (due to Sudan black that colours the lipid accumulating yeast colonies) non-cottony colonies obtained on the MEA agar were counted and expressed as log10cfu/g. Statistical analysis (Anova) was carried out to identify the statistical significance among the samples and counts of yeast. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Among the dairy environmental samples such as dung feed, fodder, sewage, silage and soil, soil had higher viable oleaginous yeast (3.20) on Sudan black incorporated malt extract agar (MEA) visible as black colonies (Fig. 1). Out of total yeast of 6.58 log10 cfu/g in soil sample, 3.20 were lipid accumulating yeast termed as oleaginous yeast of 48.63 % and fodder revealed lowest oleaginous yeast of 1.40 log10 cfu/g (23.53 %) out of 5.95 viable yeast counts (Table 1). The high oleaginous counts in soil may be due to oil spillage in dairy farm that would have reached the soil as vehicular movements are more in the farm. As fodder is green, ability of plant cells to hold the lipid may be less and hence low oleaginous yeast counts. Among the dairy environmental samples, when compared with total yeast count, oleaginous yeast presence in per cent among silage, dung, feed and sewage were 47.02, 36.73, 33.11 and 31.86, respectively (Fig. 2). Statistically significant difference (P=.05) did not occur in general yeast count and oleaginous yeast count among the dairy environmental samples. The present study enumerated the oleaginous yeast through Sudan Black stain incorporated media by obtaining black coloured colonies. Many authors have carried out the isolation of oleaginous yeast but there is lack of data with respect to the counts of oleaginous yeast from samples as all of them used staining of yeast colonies and through staining of cells only confirmed lipid accumulation either using Sudan Black or Sudan III or Nile Red lipid stains. Out of 40 yeast isolates by Pan et al. (2009); Jiru et al. (2016); Vincent et al. (2018); Khobragade et al. (2020); Planonthand Chantarasiri (2022) applied Sudan III or Sudan Black staining to yeast cells and could able to confirm 20(50 %), 18 (5.3 %), 21 (100 %), 6 (27 %) and 6 (37.5 %) yeast isolates accumulated lipid through bright field microscope respectively. While Ashika et al. (2017); Bardhan et al. (2020); Chomchuen et al. (2021) confirmed 3 (100 %), 17 (100 %) and 8 (20.51 %) oleaginous yeast isolates for intracellular lipid using Nile red under fluorescent microscope, respectively.