Microbial Degradation of Pesticides in the Environment

It has long been understood that excessive and illogical pesticide usage is bad for the environment, as it affects soil fertility and causes biomagnification of toxicity in living tissues. Such hazardous pesticidal loads can currently be reduced by means of physical, chemical, biological, and enzymatic methods. Among these, microbial enzymatic methods have proven to be more economically viable and thermodynamically reliable than other measures. In a convenient environment, bacteria utilize pesticides to dispense sulfur, carbon, and act as electron donors. Microbes including bacteria and fungi are employed to efficiently eliminate or detoxify chlorinated toxins, polychlorinated diphenyl, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and organophosphorus. In this reference, Sphingomonas, Aerobacter, Flavobacterium, Micrococcus, Bacillus, Pseudomonas, Burkholderia, Acinetobacter, and Alcaligenes are considered a few of the major bacterial genera. Among, Streptomyces and Actinomycetes have been proven to successfully detoxify pesticides among the others. Aspergillus niger, Oxysporum, Penicillium, and Fusarium are some of the fungi that possess potential to break down toxic substances. Previous studies have revealed the role of several microbial enzymes including peroxidase, hydrolases, oxygenase, dehydrogenase, organophosphorus acid anhydrolase, phosphotriesterase, dehalogenase, and ligninase, for efficiently removing the persistent organic pollutants existing in the form of pesticides. In this chapter, we stated about the role of a variety of microbes in the bioremediation pesticides and their importance in agricultural sustainability.