Influence of Long Term Irrigation with Pulp and Paper Mill Effluent on the Bacterial Community Structure and Catabolic Function in Soil

Abstract

Microbial communities play a vital role in maintaining soil health. A multiphasic approach to assess the effect of pulp and paper mill effluent on both the structure and function of microbial soil communities is taken. Bacterial communities from agricultural soils irrigated with pulp and paper mill effluent were compared to communities form soils irrigated with well water. Samples were taken from fields in the state of Uttarakhand, India, where pulp and paper mill effluent has been used for irrigation for over 25 years.

The impact of distillery effluent irrigation on plant-growth-promoting traits and taxonomic composition of bacterial communities in agricultural soil

“…2a). Members of the phyla Firmicutes , Proteobacteria and Actinobacteria are commonly reported to dominate in culturable soil bacterial communities [16,36,37,38,39].…”

“…However, the impact of DE irrigation on plant-growth-promoting (PGP) traits and taxonomic composition of soil microbial communities is still poorly understood. Two previous studies have shown that application of industrial effluent to agricultural soils could increase the diversity and catabolic profile of microbial communities [15,16]. However, these studies only considered pulp and paper mill effluent irrigation.…”

Environmental Microbial Biotechnology

“…Various sulfur compounds like sulfate, sulfur dioxide, sulfite, and dithionate are used in pulp and paper industries for various pulping processes (Ince et al 2011;Tripathi et al 2014). Sulfur compounds are also present in wood and in raw water due to use of fillers and whiteners in the chemical pulp treatment.…”

“…In anaerobic conditions sulfur-reducing bacteria are not able to use sulfate as energy source, and thus, hydrogen sulfide is liberated which is toxic and corrosive (Postgate 1984;Hamilton 2003). Wastewaters of high sulfur content, when used for land application or discharged in water bodies, lead to sulfur buildup and give rise to S-polluted lands (Tripathi et al 2014). Remediation of sulfurous water and land resources is an important issue to be addressed.…”

“…In high-S-containing wastes the soil physicochemical properties get disturbed. Soil tends to become acidic, alkaline, saline, low in water retention, and physically and physiologically dry (G omez-Ramirez et al 2014;Tripathi et al 2014;Lin et al 2014) unsuitable for normal growth of microflora Therefore, S mineralization processes in the soil-root interface greatly vary in different ecological niche depending on the soil physicochemical properties. In view of this, the ability of plants for S fixation greatly varies between soils.…”