Akansha Bhatia1, Jitendra Sahoo2, Muntjeer Ali1, Sangeeta Madan3, Naseem Ahmed4, AA Kazmi1, Ranjana Pathania2
1 Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR), Roorkee, India
2 Department of Biotechnology, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR), Roorkee, India
3 Department of Zoology and Environmental Sciences, G.K.V. Haridwar, Uttarakhand, India
4 Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IITR), Roorkee, India
ABSTRACT
One of the most versatile and remunerative techniques for handling biodegradable solid waste is composting. The present study investigated diversity of heterotrophic bacterial isolates during composting of vegetable waste, cattle manure and saw dust, in a full scale (3.5 m 3 ) Rotary Drum composter for 50 days. Culture-independent approaches using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used for the amplification of specific 16S rDNA sequences of microbes from metagenomic DNA extracted directly from solid samples. Analysis of inlet samples referred that Gram-negative bacteria, mainly of phylum Proteobacteria were predominant. Some closely related organisms with taxa were reported as Acinetobacter radioresistens (90%), Acinetobacter baumannii (92%), Acidovorax delafieldii (91%).Also, species of phylum Firmicutes (Anaerotruncus colihominis (84%), Butyrivibrio proteoclasticus (86%), Clostridium cellulovorans (81%)) were isolated, although in low numbers. Final compost samples revealed the prevalence of Bacteroidetes phylum (Flavobacterium sp. (91%)), along with Actinobacteria sp. (Leifsonia xyli (86%)) and new taxa were also isolated. Bacterial diversity, revealed by metagenomic analysis, was shown to undergo a dramatic change, possibly linked to the general decrease in temperature and the physicochemical evolution of organic matter during the composting process. Read more…
