Cell and Tissue Journal

Abstract Aim:The contamination of soil by crude oil is an important environmental problem. Bioremediation have gained more attention in recent years as a low-cost technique for pollutant removal. The aim of this research was to investigate the ability of rhizospheral fungal strains collected from plants grown in a petroleum-polluted soil using different concentrations of pollutant. Material and Methods: In this research rhizospheral fungal strains were collected from the plants grown in the Tehran refinery area and cultured on the PDA media containing different concentrations (0-15%) of crude oil.   Efficiency of removal for each isolated fungi was determined after one month. Results: Results showed that, all fungi were able to remove petroleum at the concentrations of 1, 2, 4 and 6% (P≤0.01). In addition all the fungi except Diplosporium sp. and Penicillium sp., were able to decrease crude oil at the concentrations of 8, 10 and 15% (P≤0.05). Conclusion: It was concluded that the studied fungi were able to remove the crude oil from the growth media. Since Aspergillus sp < /em>. was relatively more effective therefore this fungus has the highest bioremediation potency of petroleum polluted environments.

Abstract Aim: Petroleum is a complex mixture of thousands of hydrocarbon and non-hydrocarbon compounds, including heavy metals which potentially are carcinogenic and mutagenic. Phytoremediation has been shown to be effective for degradation or removing petroleum contaminants. Selection of plant species for phytoremediation, however, is complicated.
Material and Methods: The effects of petroleum pollution of soil (0%, 1%, 2%, 3% and 4% V/W) on the proline, total protein , lead, cadmium and zinc contents  in Acacia leaveswere investigated using methods of Bathes, Bradford and Atomic Absorption, respectively. The data were statistically analyzed using SPSS v11 and Duncan’s test.
Results: The results showed that the total protein and proline contents increased significantly (p≤0.05) as the level of pollution increased. The highest proline content was measured at 4% treated plants. Proline accumulation is a common physiological response in many plants against a wide range of biotic and abiotic stresses. The results showed that lead and zinc accumulated by leaves. The leaf lead values were markedly, 20.8-fold, enhanced in 1%. There was not significant differences among cadmium levels in treatments and the control plants.
Conclusion: Based upon these results, Robinia pseudoacacia L. can be used as bioaccumulator in petroleum pollution and were selected for the further investigation of the phytoremediation of pb-contaminated soil.