Biodegrading Bacteria from Soil

K R Aswin Sidhaarth¹, Fekadu Haile Abusei²

¹Associate Professor, ²PG Student, Department of Civil Engineering,
Vel Tech Rangarajan Dr. Sagunthala R&D Institute of Science and Technology, Chennai, India.

Abstract

In day to day human activities people are producing goods and services. These processes result in the production of by-products. These by-products are said to be wastes. They are no longer part of the main product. These include solid, liquid and gaseous wastes. Plastics are part of the solid waste. They are dumped into the environment continuously at high rate compared to other wastes. Due to this fact it is causing a crucial challenge in an ecosystem. Most of them are not easily degraded in soil. They took more than 500 years in some cases. Polystyrene is a preferably used plastic in many aspects of human life in industries as it has useful characteristics of cheap cost, lightness, easily manufacturable, versatility, thermal efficiency, durability, and moisture resistance. However, polystyrene is very stable and extremely hard to degrade in the environment after disposal. Polystyrene can be used as a carbon source for microorganisms similar to many other hydrocarbons. The ability of microorganisms to use polystyrene as a carbon source has been recently established. However, the high molecular weight of polystyrene limits its use as a substrate for enzymatic reactions to take place. This study was mainly aimed at isolating the most effective polystyrene degrading bacterial agent from five different soil samples collected from filed farm, garden area, park area, waste water area and sludge areasoil. In this study, the biodegradation of plastic material within 45 days in selected soil samples was studied by carrying out an in-situ degradation. Laboratory degradation of the agent under study was also studied using solid culture media method. The microbial species found associated with the degrading materials were identified as three Gram positive and two Gram negative bacteria. The microbial species associated with the polystyrene materials were identified as Bacillus amylolyticus, Bacillus firmus, Pseudomonas putida, Pseudomonas fluroscence, Bacillus subtilis. The isolation, identification, characterization of bacteria and the microbial activity on substrate plastic sample was analysed by gram staining, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and polymerase chain reaction techniques.

Keywords

• Biodegradation, plastics, bacterial species, gram staining, scanning electron microscopy, polymerase chain reaction techniques

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Cite this Article as Follows

K R Aswin Sidhaarth, Fekadu Haile Abusei. Biodegrading Bacteria from Soil. International Conference on Global Environmental Changes and Sustainable Development (2019): 62. Print.