Assessment of the ecological security of immobilized enzyme remediation process with biological indicators of soil health

Abstract

This study used the enzymes extracted from an atrazine-degrading strain, Arthrobacter sp. DNS10, which had been immobilized by sodium alginate to rehabilitate atrazine-polluted soil. Meanwhile, a range of biological indices were selected to assess the ecological health of contaminated soils and the ecological security of this bioremediation method. The results showed that there was no atrazine detected in soil samples after 28 days in EN+AT (the soil containing atrazine and immobilized enzyme) treatment. However, the residual atrazine concentration of the sample in AT (the soil containing atrazine only) treatment was about 5.02 ± 0.93 mg kg(-1). These results suggest that the immobilized enzyme exhibits an excellent ability in atrazine degradation. Furthermore, the immobilized enzyme could relieve soil microbial biomass carbon and soil microbial respiration intensity to 772.33 ± 34.93 mg C kg(-1) and 5.01 ± 0.17 mg CO(2) g(-1) soil h(-1), respectively. The results of the polymerase chain reaction-degeneration gradient gel electrophoresis experiment indicated that the immobilized enzyme also could make the Shannon-Wiener index and evenness index of the soil sample increase from 1.02 and 0.74 to 1.51 and 0.84, respectively. These results indicated that the immobilized enzymes not only could relieve the impact from atrazine on the soil, but also revealed that the immobilized enzymes did no significant harm on the soil ecological health.