Isolation of polypropylene degrading fungal isolates

polypropylene is one of a handful of materials the world is literally built around. With more and more plastic being employed in human lives and increasing pressure being placed on capacities available for plastic waste disposal, the need for biodegradable plastics and bio degradation of plastic wastes has assumed increasing importance in last few years.In the current study, six polypropylene degrading fungal strains were isolated via enrichment technique from the contaminated sack and the soil surrounding it.Different sources of polypropylene(sack, drinking straws and medicine bottles)were allowed to degrade biologically in MSM under shaking, static and in agar plate experiments using two selected fungal isolates. these fungal strains were identified as Fusarium solani and Drechslera australiensis. In FTIR, same degradation pattern was observed throughout the study.So it was concluded that these fungal isolates have the potential to be used for polypropylene bio degradation.