Biodegradation of High Molecular Weight Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons Mixture by a Newly Isolated Fusarium sp. and Co-Metabolic Degradation with Starch

ABSTRACT

One native fungal strain, designated ZH-H2, was isolated from an agricultural soil contaminated by HMW-PAHs in a typical coal mining area of Hebei, China. The filamentous fungus was identified as a Fusarium sp. ZH-H2 was able to survive not only in the presence of the individual HMW-PAHs of Chry, BaA, B(K)F, BaP, DB(a,h)A, InP, InP and B(g,h,i)p but in the presence of a mixture of the above seven HMW-PAHs with a total concentration of up to 10 mg L⁻¹. Biodegradation experiments demonstrated that Fusarium sp. (ZH-H2) was able to degrade the aforementioned individual HMW-PAHs, with a degradation percentage of 77%, 85%, 91%, 42%, 56%, 42% and 38%, respectively, and degrade the aforementioned seven PAHs mixture with a degradation percentage of 48%. The effect of starch addition on the biodegradation efficiency of the PAH mixture was also investigated. The results showed a significant improvement in the degradation extent of the PAH mixture with the increase of starch concentration. The greatest degradation rate (DR; 89%) in 7 d was obtained when starch was added at 1.0 g L⁻¹, about 2-fold than was achieved without starch. This study implicates that Fusarium sp. (ZH-H2), a potential biodegrader, is suitable for practical field application in effective bioremediation of soils that have been simultaneously contaminated by several HMW-PAHs for a long time.

KEYWORDS:

• Biodegradation
• coal mining area
• co-metabolic substrate starch
• Fusarium sp. (ZH-H2)
• HMW-PAH mixture

Funding

This study was supported by the Development Program of China (863 Program) (No. 2012AA101403), Educational Commission of Hebei Province of China (Z2013058, ZH2012034 and ZD2013013).