Bioaugmentation of copper polluted soil microcosms with Amycolatopsis tucumanensis to diminish phytoavailable copper for Zea mays plants

Amycolatopsis tucumanensis DSM 45259, the strain of a recently recognized novel species of the genus Amycolatopsis with remarkable copper resistance, was used to bioaugment soil microcosms experimentally polluted with copper and for studying the ability of this strain to effectively diminish phytoavailable copper from soils. Our results demonstrated that A. tucumanensis was capable of profusely colonizing both, copper polluted and non-polluted soil. Copper bioimmobilization ability of A. tucumanensis on soil was assessed measuring the bioavailable copper in the soil solution extracted from polluted soil by using chemical and physical methods and, in this way, 31% lower amounts of the metal were found in soil solution as compared to non-bioaugmented soil. The results obtained when using Zea mays as bioindicator correlated well with the values obtained by the chemical and physical procedures: 20% and 17% lower tissue contents of copper were measured in roots and leaves, respectively. These data confirmed the efficiency of the bioremediation process using A. tucumanensis and at the same time proved that chemical, physical and biological methods for assessing copper bioavailability in soils were correlated. These results suggest a potential use of this strain at large scale in copper soil bioremediation strategies. To our knowledge, this work is the first to apply and to probe the colonization ability of an Amycolatopsis strain in soil microcosms and constitutes the first application of an Amycolatopsis strain on bioremediation of polluted soils.