Microbial Remediation of Pesticides - Pesticides: Evaluation of Environmental Pollution - page 135

5.3 Bacteria
Extensive work has been conducted on the remediation of pesticides by bacterial strains
and microbial consortia. Various bacterial strains have been recently proved to be use-
ful for the removal of pesticides. A list of recently used taxa under bacteria and archaea,
which are capable of degrading various persistent pesticides, is provided in Table 5.4
and briefly discussed here. Five bacterial strains ( Pseudomonas sp., Pseudomonas putida ,
Micrococcus lylae , Pseudomonas aureofaciens , and Acetobacter liquefaciens ) are known to
show carboxylesterase activity and degrade malathion to malathion monocarboxylic and
dicarboxylic acids (Goda et al. 2010). A Gram-positive Micrococcus sp. strain PS-1 is found
capable of utilizing phenylurea herbicide diuron and a range of its analogs (monuron, lin-
uron, monolinuron, chlortoluron, and fenuron) as the sole carbon source at a high concen-
tration (up to 250 ppm). The relative degradation profile by the isolate was in the order of
fenuron > monuron > diuron > linuron > monolinuron > chlortoluron. The degradation
proceeds via formation of dealkylated metabolites to form 3,4-dichloroaniline (3,4-DCA)

TABLE 5.4
List of Bacterial and Archaeal Taxa Capable of Degrading Pesticides

Organism Used Pesticides References

Bacteria
Pseudomonas sp., Pseudomonas
putida , Micrococcus lylae ,
Pseudomonas aureofaciens , and
Acetobacter liquefaciens

Malathion Goda et al. (2010)

Micrococcus sp. Phenylurea (herbicide diuron) and a range of its

analogs (monuron, linuron, monolinuron,
chlortoluron, and fenuron)

Sharma et al. (2010)

Sphingobacterium sp. Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT),

dichlorodiphenyldichloroethane (DDD), and
dichlorodiphenyldichloroethylene (DDE)

Fang et al. (2010)

Pseudomonas sp. Propargite (miticide) Sarkar et al. (2010)

Klebsiella jilinsis Chlorimuron-ethyl, sulfonylurea herbicides

ethametsulfuron, metsulfuron-methyl, nicosulfuron,
rimsulfuron, and tribenuron-methyl

Zhang et al. (2010)

Burkholderia cepacia Carbofuran Plangklang and

Reungsang (2010)

Azotobacter chroococcum Lindane Anupama and Paul

(2010)

Paenibacillus polymyxa Beta-cypermethrin, chlorpyrifos, and imidacloprid An and Zhao (2009)

Providencia stuartii Chlorpyrifos Rani et al. (2008)

Klebsiella sp. Opera (epoxiconazole and pyraclostrobin) Lopes et al. (2010)

Sphingomonas , Acidovorax , and
Chryseobacterium spp.

Dichlorvos (an organophosphorus pesticide) Ning et al. (2010)

Genetically engineered
Stenotrophomonas sp. +
Pseudomonas syringae

A mixture of six organophosphate pesticides Yang et al. (2010)

Arthrobacter protophormiae p-Nitrophenol Paul et al. (2006)

Archaea
Haloarcula sp. and Haloferax sp.

Heptadecane Tapilatu et al. (2010)