Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2010-12-22

Bacterial degradation of fungicide captan.

Veena B Megadi, Preeti N Tallur, Sikandar I Mulla, Harichandra Z Ninnekar

Index: J. Agric. Food Chem. 58(24) , 12863-8, (2010)

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Abstract

The phthalimide fungicide captan has been widely used to control plant pathogenic fungi. A strain of Bacillus circulans utilized the fungicide captan as sole source of carbon and energy. The organism degraded captan by a pathway involving its initial hydrolysis to yield cis-1,2,3,6-tetrahydrophthalimide, a compound without fungicidal activity. The formation of this compound was confirmed by HPLC, IR, NMR, and mass spectral analysis. The results also revealed that cis-1,2,3,6-tetrahydrophthalimide was further degraded to o-phthalic acid by a protocatechuate pathway. These findings indicated that there was a complete mineralization of fungicide captan by B. circulans.