Bioremediation Studies on Pesticides in Soil by Novel Microorganisms Isolated from Agricultural Fields

Pesticides are organic compounds widely used in agriculture for increasing agricultural yield, soil productivity and to control the insect vectors for prevention of various plants, human and animal epidemics. Pesticides are widely distributed in our ecosystem. Organophosphates are found to be one of the most common group of pesticides found across the world. However, excessive and indiscriminate use of pesticides have generated a number of environmental problems such as release of toxic waste in the environment resulting to contamination of air, water and terrestrial ecosystem. In order to control the harmful effects of pesticides, multiple attempts have been made like the use of physical, chemical, biological and enzymatic approaches to reduce pesticides. However, physical and chemical methods have proven to be inefficient. One of the most promising field of biotechnology that offers a novel approach to degrade the pesticides is bioremediation. Bioremediation uses microorganisms, microbial or plants enzymes to detoxify contaminants in the soil and other environments. Three group of microorganisms i.e., bacteria, actinomycetes and fungi have been found to degrade the pesticides. Bacterial group involved in degradation includes Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Flavobacterium, Arthrobacter, Paracoccus, Aerobacter, Alcaligens, and Sphingomonas. Fungi having potential bioremediation capacities includes Fusarium, Aspergilus niger, Penicillium, Oxysporum. Streptomycetes have been found to degrade pesticides among the actinomycetes group. This review highlights various aspects of microbial degradation of pesticides including the types of pesticide degrading microbes and mechanism of degradation.