Poster Presentation Australian Society for Microbiology Annual Scientific Meeting 2016

Quaternary mixture of PAHs degradation potential of bacterial consortia–significance for bioremediation of crude oil contaminated soil (#346)

Hemen Sarma 1
  1. Botany, N N S College, Titabar, Assam, India

Emerging contaminants infiltrations into the environment due to exploration of crude oil is a serious problem. To clean these contaminants from the environment, bioremediation technique is an effective process. In this study, we isolated 11 native crude oil degrading bacteria from oil fields of Assam; the Asia’s oldest drilling sites with an aim to identify their potentiality for management of emerging contaminants like PAHs to less toxic metabolites. The pH of the collected soil samples was basic in nature with low nutrient level (NPK) and soil moisture. Electrical conductivity is also low which ranged from 1-3.8 mho m-1. The concentration of TPH in soil was recorded in the range 18.3 to 53.2% for different sites. Screening of all bacterial isolates were done using liquid mineral medium with adding quaternary mixture of PAHs (Anthracene, and Phenanthrene, Pyrene and Benzo[a]pyrene) @ 100 mg/L as a sole carbon source  at 37° C for 72 hours by indication of biofilm formation along with viable bacterial count. From 16S rDNA sequences, we confirmed that the isolated bacteria belong to the genera Bacillus, Enterobacter, Acinetobacter, Stenotrophomonas and Brevibacillus. Two most effective strains (designated as HS04 and HS12) were used for batch culture as a consortia. In the present study, it was found that the bacterial consortia transformed PAHs to different metabolites. The metabolites were further identified using GC-MS. The study suggested that isolated strains are potential for the management of crude oil contaminated soil for degradation of emerging contaminates such as Anthracene, and Phenanthrene, Pyrene and Benzo[a]pyrene.