Article Published In Vol.4 (Nov-Dec-2016)

Synthesis of a Novel Microbial Consortium useful in Treatment of Synthetic Polymers & Municipal Solid Wastes and its Effect on the Plant Growth and Environmental Engineering

Author : Vijaya Kumar Nalla, Siddharth Srivastava, Siddharth Sirohri, Deepika Khanduri, AK Sen Gupta, Sridevi T

Scientists have recently discovered that microbial action is enhanced when they are used in form of Consortia than as their individual species. Bio-organic wastes such as human wastes and municipal solid wastes contain millions of tons of fertilizer equivalents, which is roughly 20% to 30% of global industrial fertilizer production, annually. To maintain agricultural yields at high levels over the years, the nutrients removed by crops have to be replaced. Current research work focuses on developing a sustainable technology to treat bio-organic waste such as human excrements into agriculturally useful organic manure. This study also aims at exploiting the power of natural and unmodified microbial flora as consortia for degrading human manure as well as synthetic polymers such as PVC, PU, Nylon etc. Our work shows the novel enzymatic role of microbial consortia and suggests their use in breakdown of wastes and polymers while increasing nutrient quality of organic wastes.

Keywords: Microbial consortia, Human Manure, Khjedhal method, Synthetic Polymers