Remediation of endosulfan-contaminated water by hairy roots: removal and phytometabolization assessment.

Although many countries banned the insecticide endosulfan, it is still an environmental pollutant. Plants metabolize the two diastereomers of the formulations known as technical grade endosulfan (TGE) by two phase I pathways: hydrolysis leading to less toxic derivatives and oxidation giving endosulfan sulfate which is as toxic as endosulfan itself. We assessed the removal, bioaccumulation and phase I metabolization of TGE from water matrices using hairy root clones (HRs) of three edible species, , and . and HRs removed 86% of TGE from the bioreaction media in 2 and 96 h, respectively, whereas HRs removed 91% of TGE within 6 h of biotreatment. In the experiments with , only endosulfan sulfate was detected in both biomass and medium, whereas and accumulated endosulfan sulfate and endosulfan alcohol. Besides, endosulfan lactone was detected in reaction medium. Acute ichthyotoxicity assays toward showed that media contaminated with TGE lethal levels did not produce mortality after the phytotreatments. This research highlights the feasibility of using HRs to evaluate plant enzymatic abilities toward xenobiotics and their potential for the design of decontamination processes.