• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.20-26
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• 2021

In this work, an indigenous microbial consortium was obtained by selectively cultivating microbes using a long-aged petroleum-contaminated soil (Kuwait) containing recalcitrant petroleum hydrocarbons. The obtained microbial consortium was able to grow on and degrade the remaining petroleum hydrocarbons which could not have been utilized by the indigenous microbes in the original Kuwait soil. The following microbial community analysis using 16S rRNA gene sequencing suggested that the enhanced degradation of the remaining recalcitrant petroleum hydrocarbons by the novel microbial consortium may have been attributed to the selected bacterial populations belonging to Bacillus, Burkholderia, Sphingobacterium, Lachnospiraceae, Prevotella, Haemophilus, Pseudomonas, and Neisseria.