Degradation of simazine by microorganisms isolated from soils of Spanish olive fields.

Special Issue: Pesticides, Microbial Functions and Biodiversity in Soil; The capability of the microbial flora isolated from an olive field soil from Andalusia to mineralize simazine has been analyzed. From this soil, a group of bacteria capable of degrading 60 mg simazine litre-1 in less than a week has been isolated. These microorganisms showed a low capacity for degrading this herbicide to carbon dioxide. When total DNA was isolated from this group of bacteria, we were able to detect by PCR the presence of only the atzC and the trzN genes. Some components of this bacterial population have been identified by sequencing of specific fragments from bacterial 16S rDNA, including Variovorax sp…