Natural rubber degradation by verticillium sp. and chaetomium sp.

Rubber products are widely used in our daily life these products are mainly made up of Natural rubber (NR) which is obtained from the latex of tree Hevea brasiliensis commonly called Rubber tree. The average composition of the natural rubber latex is 25-30% polyisoprene, 1-1.8% proteins, 1-2% carbohydrates, 0.4-1.1% neutral lipids, 0.5-0.6% polar lipids, 0.4-0.6% inorganic components, 0.4% aminoacids etc., and other 50-70% water. The different rubber products are manufactured by using vulcanized natural rubber. During manufacturing along with vulcanized natural rubber other chemical additives will be added. After usage of these natural rubber products the disposal of these products are the world wide solid waste problem. One of the solution to reduce this problem is to recycle the used waste rubber. But due to the chemical cross linking formed during vulcanization it is not possible to simply melt and reshape the products as in case of polythene. So other alternatives such as microbial degradation of the product should be developed. Microbial degradation is mainly carried out by various microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi. During the present study an attempt was made to isolate rubber degrading microorganisms. Rubber pieces were dumped in the soil for regular interval of time and then plated on the media to isolate the organism. In the isolated organism Verticillium species and Chaetomium species effectively degraded the rubber sample. The present study has showed that, it is possible to use these strains to degrade the rubber.