Research article Decolorization of synthetic brilliant green carpet industry dye through fungal co-culture technology Simpal Kumari, Ram Naraian * Department of Biotechnology, Mushroom Training & Research Centre (MTRC), Faculty of Science, Veer Bahadur Singh Purvanchal University, Jaunpur, 222003 UP, India article info Article history: Received 16 November 2015 Received in revised form 26 April 2016 Accepted 27 April 2016 Keywords: Pleurotus Textile dyes Mycelium Submerged culture Co-culture technology abstract Aim of the present study was to evaluate the efficiency of fungal co-culture for the decolorization of synthetic brilliant green carpet industry dye. For this purpose two lignocellulolytic fungi Pleurotus florida (PF) and Rhizoctonia solani (RS) were employed. The study includes determination of enzyme profiles (laccase and peroxidase), dye decolorization efficiency of co-culture and crude enzyme extracts. Both fungi produced laccase and Mn peroxidase and successfully decolorized solutions of different concen- trations (2.0, 4.0, 6.0, & 8.0(w/v) of dye. The co-culture resulted highest 98.54% dye decolorization at 2% (w/v) of dye as compared to monocultures (82.12% with PF and 68.89% with RS) during 12 days of submerged fermentation. The lower levels of dyes were rapidly decolorized, while higher levels in slow order as 87.67% decolorization of 8% dye. The promising achievement of the study was remarkable decolorizing efficiency of co-culture over monocultures. The direct treatment of the mono and co-culture enzyme extracts to dye also influenced remarkable. The highest enzymatic decolorization was through combined (PF and RS) extracts, while lesser by monoculture extracts. Based on the observations and potentiality of co-culture technology; further it can be exploited for the bioremediation of areas contaminated with hazardous environmental pollutants including textile and other industry effluents. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Discharge of textile dyes causes major health problem to entire ecosystem due to their toxic impacts on receiving waters (Kim et al., 2004; Park et al., 2007). Synthetic dyes are generally very stable to light, temperature, and microbial attack, making them recalcitrant (Pagga and Brown, 1986; Subramonian and Wu, 2014). Further- more, dye wastewater has a large amount of suspended solids, a broadly fluctuating pH, and is highly colored (Subramonian and Wu, 2014; Wu et al., 2013). However, during last decades re- searchers focussed on for an effective treatment technology of dyes waste water, but no satisfactory solution has been searched for broad spectrum of dyes degradation. The methodological disad- vantages reported were found in physio-chemical remediation techniques and financial disadvantage (Ali and El-Mohamedy, 2012; Asgher and Iqbal, 2013). Microorganisms have enormous dye degrading capabilities for successful bioremediation of textile dyes (Chen, 2006; Asgher et al., 2009, 2012; Oves et al., 2013). White-rot fungi possess unique property of bioremediation due to the strong machinery of synthesizing extracellular lig- ninocellulolytic enzymes, which shows low specificity with sub- strate able for degradation of a wide range of xenobiotic compounds (Barr and Aust, 1994; Scheibner et al., 1997; Pointing, 2001) including textile dyes (Pasti-Grigsby et al., 1992; Paszczynski et al., 1992; Spadaro et al., 1992). The literature evi- dences number of white-rot fungi producing the lignin-degrading enzymes, lignin peroxidase (LiP), manganese peroxidase (MnP), and laccase (Fu and Viraraghavan, 2001) which can degrade dyes. Manganese peroxidase (MnP) and lignin peroxidase (LiP) reported as the main enzyme involved in dye decolorization by Phaner- ochaete chrysosporium (Kirby et al., 1995; Chagas and Durrant, 2001), Pleurotus florida and Agaricus bisporus (Shanmugam et al., 2005). Involvement of enzymatic system of basidiomycetes has a great efficiency for dye bioremediation process. Laccase is docu- mented as the main enzyme involved in dye decolorization by the cultures of Phlebia tremellosa (Kirby et al., 2000; Robinson et al., 2001; Kornillowicz-Kowalska and Rybczynska, 2015) and Pleuro- tus sajor-caju (Chagas and Durrant, 2001). Several microorganisms, including fungi, bacteria, yeasts and * Corresponding author. E-mail address: ramnarain_itrc@rediffmail.com (R. Naraian). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Environmental Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jenvman http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvman.2016.04.060 0301-4797/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Journal of Environmental Management 180 (2016) 172e179