Bioremediation of Petrol Engine Oil Polluted Soil Using Microbial Consortium and Wheat Crop

Govind Kumar*¹, Kavita Arya², Amit Verma³, Pankaj⁴, Priyanka Khati⁴, Saurabh Gangola⁴, Rajesh Kumar⁵, Anita Sharma⁴ and Hukum Singh⁶

¹Uttrakand State Council for Science & Technology. India.
²Department of Plant Pathology, G.B.P.U.A.T, Pantnagar, (U.K.), 263145, India.
³Department of Biochemistry, SDAU, Gujarat, India.
⁴Department of Microbiology, CBSH, G.B.P.U.A.T, Pantnagar (U.K.), India.
⁵Department of Environmental Microbiology BBAU, Lucknow (UP), India.
⁶Ecology, Climate change and forest influence Division,
Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, India.

Abstract

Contamination of soil / water resources by petroleum products poses severe threats to underground water and soil quality. In the present study biosurfactant producing bacterial cultures were used to degrade petrol engine oil under in situ conditions in the plant rhizosphere system. Two bacterial isolates used in this study were recovered from Haldia oil refinery site & petrol station of Pantnagar and identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa(JX100389) and P. plecoglossicida(JX149549). Application of consortium C2, (Pseudomonas aeruginosa and P. plecoglossicida) degraded 56.14 % petrol engine oil @ 2% in the soil planted with wheat (Triticumaestivum var. 2565) crop after 120 days. GC-MS of biodegraded fuel showed the presence of new product like octanoic acid-2-ethylhexyl ester and 1, 2-benzenedicarboxylic acid.

Keywords: Biophytoremediation; biosurfactant; consortium; bioavailability.