Baby Jooju^1,, Sheela Thangaraj², Senthil Kumar Sadasivam^{1, 3}

Globally, azo dyes contamination is becoming of the major environmental issues which require an urgent consideration for their effective treatment and disposal. During this decade, microbial remediation have found to be a promising solution, however, many research strategies have yet to be fixed to achieve an effective treatment of azo dyes containing textile effluents. In this context the present study was undertaken to isolate a potential azo dye degrading microbe and as a result a promising Reactive Yellow 145 (RY 145) dye degrading fungus was isolated from textile effluent sediment samples from a textile industry located at Salem district, Tamil Nadu, India and the strain was identified as Aspergillus flavus SKF8 based on molecular methods (rDNA sequencing). This strain demonstrated a growth dependent biodegradation activity of the Reactive Yellow 145 in which the highest rate of dye degradation was recorded during its stationary growth phase. Further, this strain decolorized the chosen dye to a maximum of 88.4%. Results revealed that the strain could synthesize five dye degrading enzymes viz., laccase, veratryl alcohol oxidase, lignin peroxidase, polyphenol oxidase and NADH-DCIP reductase and biodegrade the azo dyes effectively. The overall results proved that this novel isolate, Aspergillus flavus SKF8 have the potential for real-time applications in the decolorization and biodegradation activities of azo dyes containing textile effluent.

Reactive Yellow 145, Aspergillus flavus, Biodegradation, Textile effluent, azo dyes