Isolation and selection of stress tolerant plastic loving bacterial isolates from old plastic wastes.

Fifty three samples of old polythene/ plastic wastes were collected from various organic matter rich sites of 4 districts of Chhattisgarh, India. Eighty six plastic loving bacterial isolates were isolated from these samples. Further, these isolates were tested for their stress tolerance behavior. The stress tolerant behavior study revealed that 35 out of 86 bacterial isolates showed thermal shock tolerance up to 60°C for 30 minutes. Similarly, 27 out of 86 isolates showed salt tolerance up to 50,000 ppm. Most of the samples showed the presence of Pseudomonas, Xanthomonas, Flavobacterium, Agrobacterium,Bacillus spp which might be the most associative bacterial flora with the samples of old polythene/ plastic wastes