ISOLAMENTO E SELEÇÃO DE FUNGOS P ARA BIORREMEDIAÇÃO A PARTIR DE SOLO CONT AMINADO COM HERBICIDAS TRIAZÍNICOS Isolation and screening of fungi to bioremediation from triazine herbicide contaminated soil

Bioremediation is a technology that uses microrganism metabolism to quickly eliminate or reduce pollutants to acceptable levels into the environment. The triazine herbicides are intensively used to control harmful grass in the culture of maize. The aim of this work was to isolate filamentous fungi from soil contaminated with triazine herbicides and screening these fungi due to their ability of growth in a medium added by atrazine. The fungi were isolated, cultivated in potato-dextrose-agar plus 50 mg.Kg -1 of atrazine and incubated for 5 days at 25oC. The measure of the rays of the colonies was carried out daily and the radial growth rate (RGR) through linear regression of colonies rays using the equation: r(t) = a + RGR .t (r:ray; t: time; RGR: radial growth rate). The RGR results were analyzed through analysis of variance and Tukey test for comparison of averages. Fifteen filamentous fungi from genus Aspergillus, Penicillium and Trichoderma were isolated. The highest RGRs were obtained with the fungi Aspergillus and Penicillium, when isolated from contaminated soil with atrazine and atrazine + simazine, respectively, showing RGR of 1.57 mm.d 1 and 1.28 mm.d -1 . The growth of these fungi in atrazine contaminated meas indicates a possible of use of them in bioremediation experiments with contaminated soil containing triazine herbicides.