Abstract
Excessive use of pesticides is evident in third world countries and Pakistan is not the exception to this. Most of these pesticides
are persistent and they remain present in ecosystem as active ingredient for longer duration. Their presence cause serious
damage to micro flora and fauna, thus disturbing the functioning of ecosystems. After absorbance, they enter into food chain
and tend to bio-accumulate. In the present situation, bio-augmentation and bio-stimulation are considered most safe techniques
to clean pesticide contaminated soils. These techniques are natural, cost effective, do not produce toxic by products and easy
to handle. The present study was designed to degrade chlorpyrifos (CP) in laboratory soil using Pseudomonas sp., which was
isolated from industrial drain. This strain showed promising results in both liquid medium and soil. This strain degraded up to
60mg of CP per one Kg of soil. Among different organic amendments, farm yard manure was most effective and showed
highly significant results. Kinetic analysis and its data also provide strong evidence of success. Kinetic parameters were as
follow; R2 = 0.9917, Ks = 159.0271, Vmax = 9.64 and Vmax/Ks = 0.0606. This research is successful as it provided indigenous
solution to a environmental problem.
