Bioaugmentation with Engineered Endophytic Bacteria Improves Phytoremediation

摘要

Background/Objectives. Phytoremediation of volatile organic contaminants is often unsatisfactory because plants and their rhizosphere do not completely degrade these compounds resulting in evapotranspiration through the leaves causing secondary contamination of the ambient air and by consequence undermining the merits of phytoremediation. Under laboratory conditions, endophytic bacteria equipped with the appropriate degradation pathway can be used to improve the in planta degradation of organic contaminants resulting in a decreased phytotoxicity and a reduction of evapotranspiration. This improved phytoremediation efficiency was achieved by enriching the appropriate endophytic strain by means of inoculation (Barac et al., 2004) and by in planta horizontal transfer of the plasmid containing the degradation genes to members of the natural abundant population (Taghavi et al., 2005). The objective of this work was to test this concept in the field.