Effect of Atrazine on Microbial and Physcochemical Parametrs of Atrazine Contaminated Soil
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Abstract
Rates of biodegradation are affected by atrazine's low solubility; surfactants may increase the degradation rate. Though the two alkyl moieties readily support growth of certain microorganisms, the atrazine ring is a poor energy source due to the oxidized state of ring carbon. The physiochemical parameters and microbial loads of the soil were determined using standard microbiological standards where tenfold serial dilution was carried out on the various soil samples which was inoculated using pour plate technique while the colorimetric method was employed in the in determination of the nitrogen, phosphorous and Potassium concentration. The pH meter was used to determine the soil pH. The experiment was carried out for a period of four weeks with the soil microbial load declining from 7.33 x 108Cfu/ml to 1.11 x 101Cfu/ml across the various concentrations of atrazine from 0% to 120%. The pH increased from 5.17 to 8.96, the soil nutrients decreased as the days passes by were, the soil nitrogen content decreased from 6.543 nm to 1.341nm while Phosphorus decreased from 6.772nm to 0.877nm while the Potassium content also decreased from 6.456nm to 0.566nm. Three bacterial isolates where obtained from this study which includes Clostridium sp., Pseudomonas sp. and Bacillus Sp. The Clostridium Sp. has the highest inhibition zone diameter at 500mg/ml of atrazine with 22.4 ± 0.00mm followed by Pseudomonas sp. with 20.5 ± 0.05mm and Bacillus sp. with the least inhibition diameter of 17.5 ± 0.01mm. These antimicrobial activities at various concentrations of atrazine reveals that atrazine was actually the major cause of the decline in the soil microbial load.
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