Summary
The effect of recurrent applications of the herbicide glyphosate on a garden soil was investigated. Compared to an adjacent untreated soil the microbial population showed reduced sensitivity to glyphosate when grown in mineral salts medium. In both populations inhibition could be partially reversed by addition to the medium of the end products of the aromatic amino acid biosynthetic pathway, but the effect was more pronounced in the population from the treated site. However, all isolates from both soils were capable of growth in unsupplemented medium in the presence of as much as 10 mM glyphosate. No evidence for glyphosate metabolism was obtained from enrichment experiments carried out using inocula from the untreated soil; at the treated site organisms capable of using glyphosate as sole C or N source could not be isolated but a variety of Gram-negative bacteria able to use its phosphonate moiety were obtained. Many of these organisms were identified as Pseudomonas spp.
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Quinn, J.P., Peden, J.M.M. & Dick, R.E. Glyphosate tolerance and utilization by the microflora of soils treated with the herbicide. Appl Microbiol Biotechnol 29, 511–516 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00269078
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00269078