Research Article Enhanced Removal of a Pesticides Mixture by Single Cultures and Consortia of Free and Immobilized Streptomyces Strains

Copyright © 2013 Maŕıa S. Fuentes et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Pesticides are normally used to control specific pests and to increase the productivity in crops; as a result, soils are contaminated with mixtures of pesticides. In this work, the ability of Streptomyces strains (either as pure or mixed cultures) to remove pentachlorophenol and chlorpyrifos was studied. The antagonism among the strains and their tolerance to the toxic mixture was evaluated. Results revealed that the strains did not have any antagonistic effects and showed tolerance against the pesticidesmixture. In fact, the growth of mixed cultures was significantly higher than in pure cultures. Moreover, a pure culture (Streptomyces sp. A5) and a quadruple culture had the highest pentachlorophenol removal percentages (10.6 % and 10.1%, resp.), while Streptomyces sp.M