Developing indigenous bacterial consortia from UNIMAS microbial collection for potential application in the bioremediation of soil contaminated soil

The present study was undertaken to develop and to test the efficiency of microbial consortia for in situ bioremediation of three months old artificially contaminated soil with used motor oil. After solid and liquid biodegradation assay, four Bacillus sp. were chosen to construct microbial consortia and were evaluated for their potential degradation of contaminated sandy soil under laboratory condition with addition of fertili zer. To mimic the natural condition, all of the soils were not sterilized. The gravimetric analysis for first ten days showed no biodegradation in treatment soil while the next ten days showed reduction in biodegradation percentage. In contrast, the control soil showed 90.90% reduction in total petroleum hydrocarbons (TPH) which manifested that the developed microbial consortia did not work efficiently in this study. Gas chromatography/mass spectrophotometer (Gc/MS) was done to further confirm the gravimetric analysis results