Friday, September 22, 2023

Bioremediation of Pesticides in Greywater

 

By: Esmeralda Sandoval
   
Pesticides accumulate in water systems due to runoff from agricultural lands. They pose many serious threats to water microbiota and human populations. Greywater consists of domestic wastewater without fecal contamination, such as water from showers, washing machines, and sinks. Researchers investigated three different bioremediation approaches, the use of microbes to clean polluted sites, using a fungus culture, an isolated microbial consortium, and an augmented microbial consortium with fungus against two pesticides, carbendazim and thiamethoxam. The results showed that the use of the augmented consortium to biodegrade the pesticides surpassed that of the other microbial cultures, showcasing a biodegradation efficiency of 94.29% for carbendazim and 92.41% for thiamethoxam. These results suggest a promising use of cultures augmented with the fungus A. versicolor to remove persisting pesticide pollution in the environment and wastewater.



Degradation profiles of pesticides with the tested cultures: (a) fungus, (b) bacterial consortium, and (c) augmented consortium. Figure taken from Rajpal et al. 2023.

Original Article:

Rajpal, Verma, S., Kumar, N., Lee, J., Kim, K.-H., Ratan, J. K., & Divya, N. (2023). Bioremediation of carbendazim and thiamethoxam in domestic greywater using a bioaugmented microbial consortium. Environmental Technology & Innovation, 30, 103087–. doi.org/10.1016/j.eti.2023.103087

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