Organophosphorus pesticides biodegradation by three bacterial genera and their protoplast fusants

Among the various groups of pesticides the major and most widely used group all over the world,is organophosphorus. this group is rating more than 36% of the total world market. chlorpyrifos as an organophosphorus pesticides (op) used for agriculture crop protection in the world,although it was prevented,it is used in some developed countries. the objective of this work was to degrade these pesticide using three common bacteria from farmlands that showed susceptibility for op degradation (pseudomonas fluorescens (ps),bacillus megaterium (ba) and rhizobium legumino-sarum (rh)). the promising strains had been chosen for intergeneric protoplast fusion. the protoplast fusion abilities for chlorpyrifos biodegradation were examined and compared with their parental bacteria. molecular study using randomly amplified polymorphic dna (rapd) and sodium dodecylsulphate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (sds-page) were applied to identifying the genetic interrelationship between fusants and their parents. these fusions showed a highly increase in chlorpyrifos biodegradation and were very stable. our results indicated that these fusants strains could be environmentally friendly bacterial strains and present some important characteristics effective for biodegradation of pesticides.