Isolation of Chlorpyrifos Degrading Bacteria from Garden Soil

Chlorpyrifos is an organophosphorus insecticide broadly used for pest control in the urban and domestic area. It plays an important role in agriculture. Because of its persistent usage, it remains in the natural environment for a long period and hard to degrade its intermediate compounds. Microbial degradation is the best way to confiscate its toxicity. The present study reported that the degradation of chlorpyrifos by soil Pseudomonas aeruginosa Soil sample was collected from the garden. After enriching the soil sample with chlorpyrifos pesticide, the bacterial strain was isolated. The isolated bacterium was identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and used for chlorpyrifos degradation studies. The efficient production of biosurfactant by Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterium was tested with the experiments. The presence of biosurfactant property increases the rate of degradation of chlorpyrifos by Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The efficiency of the bacterial strain on the degradation of different concentration of the chlorpyrifos was studied using 1, 5 and 9 ppm of the chlorpyrifos for 15 days. HPLC analysis showed that there was a reduction in peak area of the different concentrations of pesticide samples (1,5 and 9 ppm) inoculated with the isolated Pseudomonas aeruginosa with that of control pesticide sample without inoculum on different days (5,10 and 15th day). The bacteria effectively degraded the chlorpyrifos in all the concentration when the duration of exposure is increased. From these above studies, it has been concluded that chlorpyrifos can be biodegradable by Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacteria which can utilize carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous sources from chlorpyrifos pesticide.