Screening of Microorganisms for Biodegradation of Simazine Pollution (Obsolete Pesticide Azotop 50 WP)

Abstract

The capability of environmental microorganisms to biodegrade simazine—an active substance of 2-chloro-s-triazine herbicides (pesticide waste since 2007)—was assessed. An enormous metabolic potential of microorganisms impels to explore the possibilities of using them as an alternative way for thermal and chemical methods of utilization. First, the biotope rich in microorganisms resistant to simazine was examined. Only the higher dose of simazine (100 mg/l) had an actual influence on quantity of bacteria and environmental fungi incubated on substrate with simazine. Most simazine-resistant bacteria populated activated sludge and biohumus (vermicompost); the biggest strain of resistant fungi was found in floral soil and risosphere soil of maize. Compost and biohumus were the sources of microorganisms which biodegraded simazine, though either of them was the dominant considering the quantity of simazine-resistant microorganisms. In both cases of periodic culture (microorganisms from biohumus and compost), nearly 100% of simazine (50 mg/l) was degraded (within 8 days). After the repeated enrichment culture with simazine, the rate of its degradation highly accelerated, and just after 24 h, the significant decrease of simazine (20% in compost and 80% in biohumus) was noted. Although a dozen attempts of isolating various strains responsible for biodegradation of simazine from compost and biohumus were performed, only the strain identified as Arthrobacter urefaciens (NC) was obtained, and it biodegraded simazine with almost 100% efficiency (within 4 days).

The National Program for the Liquidation of Pesticide Waste Landfills, Successes and Unused Opportunities – Case Study From Poland

“…Company Fregata S.A. in Gdansk (production division in Waćmierz) had used the biological technology -inactivating washings and pesticide residues by means of biological method in bioreactor with fixed active bed to clean the industrial wastewater. Installing, converting 550 Mg waste annually, is effective, simple and above all safe for the environment (Błaszak et al 2011). Knowing the composition of washings (in the factory -as opposed to the landfill -the variety of chemicals is small), it can be easier to fit the appropriate composition of the vaccine.…”

Phytoremediation and Bioremediation of Pesticide-Contaminated Soil

“…These processes are appropriate for application in all countries because they are cost-effective and relatively simple to implement. Bioremediation can take place under aerobic and anaerobic conditions [25,111,133,221]. The science of bioremediation is important for both in situ bioremediation and in applications where pesticide-contaminated soil is treated using composting, land farming or biopiles [34,111,264,277,279,283,284].…”

“…There has been significant progress in developing in situ bioremediation for pesticides [25,[86][87][88]92,111,112,134,151,154,159,162,[180][181][182]185,188,202,204,206,244,277,283,284,286]. These methods fall into three general categories; phytoremediation, bioremediation by indigenous organisms and bioaugmentation.…”

Quantifying the contribution of riparian soils to the provision of ecosystem services

“…In our study, only the woodlands showed a different pattern in terms of pesticide degradation when comparing sites close and distal to the river. However, we hypothesized that the negative correlation between simazine degradation and N and P inorganic forms content could explain this spatial variability as the use of pesticides as a source of energy in areas with low nutrient status has been identified (Błaszak et al, 2011). In addition, it has been shown that some organisms (e.g.…”

“…In addition, it has been shown that some organisms (e.g. Pseudomonas) are able to mineralise simazine more rapidly (Regitano, 2006;Błaszak et al, 2011) and therefore a more diverse microbial population associated with a higher above-ground plant diversity could be involved in different ecosystems. Our results may therefore reflect the spatial heterogeneity of microbial populations within these habitat types rather than a specialization of microbial population in riparian areas.…”