Response of microbial community to the remediation of neonicotinoid insecticide imidacloprid contaminated wetland soil by Phanerochaete chrysosporium

Imidacloprid (IMI), a typic neonicotinoid insecticide, is widely used and persist in soils with long half-time causing serious threat to ecosystem and human health. It is urgent to develop suitable and effective methods to accelerate it degradation and alleviate its negative impacts in soil. In this study, the introduction of functional microbe white-rot fungus Phanerochaete chrysosporium to remediate IMI contaminated wetland soil was carried out. The remediation performance and the response of the soil microbial community were examined. The results showed that P. chrysosporium could improve the degradation of IMI in soil no matter the soil was sterilized or not. The bioaugmentation was especially observed in non-sterilized soil under the inoculation patterns of FE and SP with the maximum IMI degradation rate of 91% and 93% in 7 days, respectively. The invertase activity in soil was also enhanced with P. chrysosporium inoculation. Microbial community analysis revealed that P. chrysosporium inoculation could increase the diversity and richness of bacterial community, and stimulate some IMI degraders genera including Ochrobactrum, Leifsonia, Achromobacter, and Bacillus. Moreover, the xenobiotic degradation and metabolism pathway was generally enhanced with P. chrysosporium inoculation based on PICRUSt analysis. These obtained results demonstrated that the introduction of white-rot fungus is of great potentially enabling the remediation of neonicotinoids contaminated soil.