Microorganisms in Environmental Management

Microorganisms and their biosynthetic capabilities have solved several difficult problems in the welfare of mankind. Various fields in which microorganisms have helped mankind include medical technology, human and animal health, food processing, food safety and quality, genetic engineering, environmental protection, agricultural biotechnology and more effective treatment of agriculture, and municipal and industrial waste treatment, which provide a most impressive record of achievements. Most of these technological advancements would not have been possible using conventional straightforward chemical and physical engineering methods, or if they were, they would not have been practically or economically feasible and might cause environmental pollution problems.§In recent years, microbial technologies have been applied to several environmental problems with considerable success. However, these technologies have not always been widely accepted by the scientific community because it is often difficult to consistently reproduce their beneficial effects. Microorganisms are effective only when they are presented with suitable and optimum conditions for metabolizing their substrates including available water, oxygen, pH and temperature of their environment. Meanwhile, the various types of microbial cultures and inoculants available in the market today have rapidly increased because of the new technologies. Significant achievements are being made in systems where technical guidance is coordinated with the marketing of microbial products. Since microorganisms are useful in solving problems associated with the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, they are now widely applied in nature farming and organic agriculture. §Environmental pollution caused by excessive soil erosion and the associated transport of §sediment, chemical fertilizers and pesticides to surface and groundwater and improper treatment of human and animal wastes has caused serious environmental and social problems throughout the world. Often attempts have been made to solve these problems using the established chemical and physical methods. It has, however, been realized that these problems cannot be solved without using microbial methods and technologies in coordination with agricultural production. The book is about the utility of microbes in solving a great variety of environmental problems.