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Interaction effects and mechanisms of microorganisms and microplastics in soil environment
Summary
This review examines how microplastics and soil microorganisms interact: microplastics disrupt soil structure, reduce water retention, and impede plant root growth, while certain bacteria and fungi can colonize and partially degrade plastic particles through a multi-step process involving colonization, fragmentation, assimilation, and mineralization. Different polymer types (PE, PP, PS, PVC, PET) attract different microbial communities, and factors like temperature, moisture, and plastic additives affect degradation rates. Understanding these interactions is key to assessing long-term soil health impacts and developing microbial strategies to reduce plastic accumulation in agricultural soils.
Abstract The issue of microplastic pollution has long been a global ecological priority, while biodegradation has received increasing attention as an important route for microplastic degradation. Polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS) polyvinyl chloride (PVC) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET) are microplastics frequently found in soil. Excessive amounts of microplastics can cause damage to soil structure. Microplastics can negatively affect the water holding capacity of the soil and reduce the permeability of the soil. In addition, microplastics can aggregate with the soil, altering the soil environment and impeding the growth of plant roots. In the soil environment, microplastics can interact with microorganisms, and different types of microorganisms interact with different forms of microplastics in different ways. In this paper, the main pathways of microbial degradation of microplastics are compiled, including four stages: colonization, fragmentation, assimilation and mineralization, focusing on the analysis of different microbes in the soil environment on the mechanism of different types of microplastics and the related enzyme reactions, in order to avoid the toxicity of MPs to microorganisms in the soil environment, and the main factors affecting the activity in the process of degradation are reviewed, which will provide a reasonable basis for the subsequent degradation of the maximization.