Perspectives and vision for strain selection in bioaugmentation

Abstract

Notwithstanding the phenomenally large and ever-increasing resource of pollutant-degrading microbial isolates in laboratories around the globe, inoculum survival remains the 'Achilles' heel' for bioaugmentation of contaminated land. Considerable effort has been invested into inoculum strain selection to facilitate pollutant biodegradation, ranging from the isolation of 'superbugs,' which are microorganisms highly resilient to environmental stresses, harboring catabolically superior pollutant-degrading enzymes, to the other extreme in 'priming', where pollutant degradation is carried out through the addition of soil enriched with an undefined consortium of pollutant-degrading microorganisms.