Isolation and Identification of Microfungi from Diesel Oil Contaminated Soils and Their Physico-Chemical Analysis

Abstract

Diesel oil contaminated soils were collected and analyzed for various Physico-chemical properties that included moisture content, total carbon, total nitrogen and phosphorus using standard protocol and the data compared from normal uncontaminated soils. Analysis revealed that all 5 samples of diesel oil contaminated soils possessed higher percent of moisture content, greater amounts of total carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus in comparison to non-contaminated control soils. The diesel oil contaminated soils are not suitable for cultivation of agricultural crops. Though, several species of fungi were isolated from diesel contaminated soils but only 6 species of Aspergillus utilized diesel oil as sole carbon and nitrogen source as these grew well and sporulated normally on 2% agar that contained 10% of diesel oil only as nutrient. These included Aspergillus luchuensis, Aspergillus violaceofuscus, Aspergillus niveus, Aspergillus terreus, Aspergillus japonicus, Aspergillus ustus. which also grew well in broth  containing 0.5% jaggery (for initial growth) supplemented with 10% diesel oil only which suggest that these species could utilize diesel oil as sole carbon and nitrogen source because no other nutrient other than diesel oil was added into the medium. The role of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus is soils has been discussed in this paper.