3.7 Microbiological and plant experiments
Three bacterial strains B1, B2, and B3 were isolated from OS soil samples and identified as Pseudomonas stutzeri , Bacillus pumilus , and Pseudomonas anguilliseptica (Fig. 8a, b, c ), respectively. Simultaneously, Pseudomonas and Bacillus belong to keystone taxa in OS microbial network. A one-week petroleum hydrocarbon degradation experiment shows that the degradation efficiency for strain B1, B2, B3, and SynCom reached 32.4%, 37.1%, 40.2%, and 45.6%, respectively (Fig. 8d ). Then SynCom was used to identify the effects of co-cultured bacterial strains B1, B2, and B3 on the growth of maize seedlings under petroleum pollution. The results showed that SynCom treatment significantly improves the seedlings’ dry weight, shoot length, and root length (Fig. 8e ).