BIODEGRADATION OF SENCOR HERBICIDE BY SOME TREPTOMYCETES IN LIQUID CULTURE

Abstract

This work was designed to study the role of streptomycetes in the
biodegradation of Sencor herbicide and its persistence in liquid culture. Testing the
biodegradation abilities of nine isolates of Streptomyces in vitro revealed that they differed greatly
in the number of degradation-products produced from Sencor. Gas liquid chromatographic analysis
revealed that all tested isolates began to degrade Sencor after 15 days from incubation. Number of
compounds varied from one to five depending upon the isolate used, as the streptomycete isolates
varied greatly in their abilities to degrade Sencor as indexed by the number of compounds produced
from Sencor degradation. The products of Sencor degradation were more demonstrated after 30 and
45 days from incubation. Half life period of the herbicide was reached after 15 days in S.
aureomonopodiales and mixture treatments, while was reached in the other treatments after 30
days. The present results could be considered as an additional prove for the in-vitro abilities of
these streptomycete isolates to degrade and utilize Sencor as a sole nitrogen source in culture
medium.