Glyphosate-degrading consortia: Microbial succession and key enzyme gene insights

Glyphosate is a widely used non-selective herbicide with significant environmental and health concerns, highlighting the urgent need for effective remediation strategies. Among the available technologies, microbial enzyme-catalyzed degradation offers a more sustainable and practical solution. This study aimed to enrich and characterize microbial consortia from soils in coffee plantations in Espirito Santo, Brazil, exposed to various weed management practices. The enrichment process, followed by metataxonomic and metagenomics analysis, revealed dynamic shifts in the microbial community composition over time. Achromobacter and Serratia were identified as key genera, harboring the complete metabolic repertoire with the potential for mineralization of glyphosate and aminomethylphosphonic acid. High-Performance Liquid Chromatography with Diode Array Detection analyses confirmed the efficient degradation of both compounds, with consortia Con-CC and Con-CC-G achieving the highest removal efficiencies under both carbon- and phosphorus-limited conditions. These results highlight the significant potential of these consortia for bioremediation of glyphosate-contaminated environments.