Strategie per il risanamento delle aree urbane ad uso agricolo: un approccio micologico

This Thesis is part of the ¿Re-Horti¿ project aimed to develop efficient and eco-friendly strategies to remediate urban soil by organic pollutants by means of autochthonous fungal strains for in-situ bioremediation. The site was selected in Turin areas and analyzed from a chemical point of view in order to select target organic pollutants (pyrene, phenantrene, perylene, eicosane, paraffin oil and a mix of mineral oil extracted from an heavily polluted industrial soil). The soil had a good microbial richness, both in mesophilic and thermophilic fungi (up to 5 x 104 CFU/g dwt) and bacteria (up to 4 x 105 CFU/g dwt), which was evaluated by means of soil dilution plate techniques. Fungi naturally occurring in the soil were isolated under the selective pressure of target pollutants as the sole carbon source, in subsequent liquid and solid enrichment techniques. A total of 88 strains, belonging to 29 taxa, were isolated and identified by means of a polyphasic approach that couples morphological and molecular analyses. Dereplication analysis indicated the presence of 72 individual strains. Discarded the 22 strains belonging to species potential pathogenic for human beings (Scedosporium spp., Aspergillus fumigatus), one representative of each of the 23 taxa exploitable for in-situ remediation were tested in a miniaturized experiment to highlight the strains with the highest degradative capabilities towards the target pollutants. The best strains were selected to develop three different consortia for soil bioaugmentation and biostimulation.