Abstract:

Phenol is one of the most important environmental pollutants that are found in sewage and industrialwater from which agricultural lands are irrigated. In this study Curtobacterium flaccumfaciensbacterium was isolated in pure culture from phenol-uncontaminated farmland soil. Its ability tobiodegrade phenol was examined. C. flaccumfaciens demonstrated its ability to use phenol as asource of carbon and energy in batch cultures. The isolated strain was able to completely biodegrade700 mg/L phenol in a reasonable incubation period (96 h). However, these bacteria were able tocompletely remove 700 mg/L of phenol in a reasonable incubation period (96 h). The degradation rateof phenol was 19.4 ppm/h. However, they also endured higher concentrations than 1200 mg/L, but hada lower biodegradation rate because of cytotoxicity generated by phenol concentration of more than700 mg/L. It was observed that the biodegradation process of phenol occurred at pH 7.0 to obtainmaximum degradation of phenol by C. flaccumfaciens. In addition, the biodegradation of phenolsoccurred over a large range of incubation temperature (25 to 37ºC) where 28ºC was the optimumincubation temperature for C. flaccumfaciens cells for phenol biodegradation. Since this is, the firststudy related to the use of C. flaccumfaciens in the biodegradation process of phenol, more works needto be done, whether from a biochemical or molecular biology point of view.