Effects of Inoculation of PAH-degrading Bacteria and Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungi on Responses of Ryegrass to Phenanthrene and Pyrene

Abstract

In order to investigate the effects of soil microorganisms on biochemical and physiological response of plants to PAHs, PAH-degrading bacteria (Acinetobacter sp.) and/or arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus (Glomus mosseae) were inoculated with ryegrass (Lolium multiflorum) under four different concentrations of phenanthrene and pyrene (0, 50 + 50, 100 + 100, 200 + 200 mg kg^–1) in soils. Acinetobacter sp. played limited roles on the growth of ryegrass, chlorophyll content, water soluble carbohydrate content, malondialdehyde (MDA) content, activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and peroxidase (POD) in shoot. By contrast, G. mosseae significantly (P < 0.01) increased ryegrass growth, partially by improving the photosynthetic activity through increasing the chlorophyll content in shoot. G. mosseae also significantly decreased MDA content in shoot. However, G. mosseae significantly increased SOD activity in shoot, which seemed to be resulted from significantly higher pyrene concentrations in shoot. The present study suggested that AM fungi could reduce the damage of cell membranes caused by free radicals, which may be one of the mechanisms involved in mycorrhizal alleviation of plant stress under PAHs. The present study indicated that the dual inoculation was superior to single inoculation in remediating PAHs contaminated soils.

Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of International Journal of Phytoremediation to view the supplemental file.

KEY WORDS:

• phytoremediation
• toxicity of PAHs
• biochemical and physiological response
• dual inoculation

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The study was supported by the Research Grants of the University Grants Committee of Hong Kong (Special Equipment Grant of RGC (SEG HKBU09)), and the Mini-AoE (RC/AOE/08-09/01) Fund from Hong Kong Baptist University.

The two authors (Fuyong Wu and Xiezhi Yu) contributed equally to this article.