摘要：Persistent organic pollutants such as Dichloro diphenyl trichloroethane (DDT) and related compounds are of particular environmental concern because of their toxicity, high persistence, resistance to degradation and liability to bioaccumulation. In our Laboratory, we have developed a defined microbial consortium capable of degrading DDT. The microbial consortium consisted of ten bacterial isolates of which seven were species of Pseudomonas and other three were species of Flavobacterium , Vibrio and Burkholderia . Out of twelve co-substrates used to study the enhancement in DDT-degradation, yeast extract was found to be the best showing 74% degradation at 0.0174 μg mL-1 day-1 followed by glucose and beef extract (55.98%) at 0.0109 and 0.0111 μg mL-1 day-1, respectively. Glycerol and tryptone soya broth showed inhibitory effects with 14.92 and 10.52% degradation with 0.0023 and 0.0015 μg mL-1 day-1, respectively. Growth was best with glycerol followed by peptone. Growth of the consortium was not found to have profound influence on the degradation of DDT.
