Pollutant removal from cheese processing effluent using effective indigenous natural scavengers.

The goal of this study was to come up with an efficient method for treating cheese production wastewater. Because the effluent has a higher concentration of organic and inorganic materials, the indigenous microbial treatment process was used to effectively remove total dissolved solids (TDS), chemical oxygen demand (COD), and color without the addition of any nutrients. The indigenous microorganisms were tested for color, TDS, and COD elimination by growing them in "nutrient broth medium" loaded with different amounts of cheese effluent. The isolates were identified by 16S rRNA sequencing, and the results revealed that strain 1 was Enterobacter cloacae, strain 2 was Lactococcus garvieae, and strains 3 and 4 were Bacillus cereus and Bacillus mycoides, respectively. After 36 h of incubation, the data were evaluated. Among all the microbes, E. cloacae reduced TDS and COD from the effluent the most (80 ± 0.2% and 87 ± 0.4% COD, respectively). When compared to individual species, consortia were more efficient (86 ± 0.2% TDS and 90 ± 0.3% COD). On treatment, the correlation coefficient "r" for TDS and COD elimination was found to be 1, resulting in a positive linear connection. The current study suggests that microbial therapies are both effective and environmentally beneficial.

Greener production of compost from agricultural biomass residues amended with mule dung for agronomic application.

In this study agro-waste (Agwt) was aerobically composted using cow dung (CD) and mule dung (MD). Totally six different sets of compost treatments were prepared, as T1 (Agwt + CD, 1:1), T2 (Agwt + MD, 1:1), T3 (Agwt + CD, 1:3), T4 (Agwt + MD, 1:3), T5 (Agwt + CD, 3:1) and T6 (Agwt + MD, 3:1) in individual containers. All the compost treatments were degraded for 90 days. The organic wastes in the treatment containers were maintained with proper moisture level. All the final composts reached good manural stability and maturity index after 90 days. Among the six treatments, the T2 with Agwt + MD in 1:1 proportion attained a 10:1 C/N ratio and a near neutral pH (7.3). Indigenous microbes isolated and identified from the T2 compost sample showed protease, cellulase, amylase and lipase activities. The germination of Raphanus sativus L. seeds and vigorous plant growth parameters confirmed the non-pathogenic phytotoxic-free nature of finished composts. The radish crops supplied with T2 compost showed healthy tuber growth parameters (16.6 cm width, 35.6 cm length) compared with other treatments. The results from the experiments established that, the composts derived are eco-friendly amendment to plants and it has also improved the soil fertility due to its stability and maturity index. Thus, the present study concluded that composting agricultural crops waste with animal manure, especially mule dung promoted excellent biodegradation of organic complexes. It is a nature friendly solution for the management of solid waste such as agro-wastes utilizing mule dung.

Micro-plastic pollution along the Bay of Bengal coastal stretch of Tamil Nadu, South India.

In the present-day context, micro-plastic particles in a marine environment are increasingly ubiquitous and of considerable persistence. In line with the micro-plastic pollution, the present contribution is devoted to the investigation of micro-plastic particles (MPs) along the urban sandy beach called Marina, the renowned longest beach in India. Along the sea coast of about 5 km, the quantification of micro-plastic particles using optical microscope evidenced the granular, filamentous, filmy and tubular fragments in a total of 72 marine samples including those filtered in the marine water column (WAT; 24 samples), those found in wet sediment (WET; 24 samples) and those found in dry sand (DSS; 24 samples). The filamentous-typed plastics of 79%, 57% and 52%, respectively in WET, WAT and DSS dominated over the other granular and tubular types. The micro-plastic particles were in the range of 60-820 items per m3, 60-1620 items per kg and 20-1540 items per kg for WAT, WET and DSS, respectively. The standard deviation for the microplastics abundance were 193.1, 396.6 and 364.6 for WAT, WET and DSS respectively. Upon visual inspection, the micro particles were observed in eight different colors and most of the samples were found to contain two different fragment types. Apart from the optical microscopic examination, the micro-plastics particles were studied by scanning electron microscope (SEM) coupled with elemental analysis by energy dispersive spectroscopy (EDS). The energy spectral graphs displayed that the micro-filaments and micro-tubular particles contained polyesters and fluoro-polymers. The presence of few micro-filaments of polypropylene and polyethylene was also evidenced from their atomic percentage values of carbon of about 88% and 93%, respectively. The presence of fluoro-polymers and polyesters was also confirmed by Fourier Transform Infra-Red (FTIR). Excepting the fluoro-polymers, the micro-plastics particles contained elements arising from sea water (Na, Cl, S, Mg, Ca, K). Heavy metals such as Cu, Mn, Mo, Ru and Rh were observed in micro-tubular fragments. Fe and Ti elements were detected with the highest atomic percentage of 17.19 and 19.84 in micro-tubular fragments. All the observations and analyses give a photography of the nature and the spatial distribution of MPs along this Indian beach.

Cellulolytic bacteria isolation, screening and optimization of enzyme production from vermicompost of paper cup waste.

In the current scenario, used paper cups are disposed of without any proper treatment, thereby damaging the environment. Hence, the vermicomposting technique is preferred for managing these wastes. The ability of bacterial strains on cellulase enzyme (Endoglucanase, exoglucanase and ß-glucosidase) production at altered pH and temperatures were focused in this study. Among nine bacterial strains Acinetobacter baumannii was found to have high enzyme activity. HPLC analysis confirms that about 45% of cellulose degradation occurred due to the action of bacterial consortia at 37 °C with pH 7. The overall period required for degradation takes only three months with the help of bacterial consortia while comparing to our previous study, which takes six months. The insilico study on three cellulose-degrading enzymes sequence were retrieved from NCBI, and analysed for multiple sequence alignment and phylogenetic tree construction. From the analysis, the endoglucanase SVK46152 (Acinetobacter baumannii) sequence got docked with cellopentaose with a high score value -11.07. Thereby we confirm that organism Acinetobacter baumannii was effective in paper cup degradation.