Selection of micro-organisms for the treatment of industrial effluents and for the synthesis of dyes.

The underlying idea of the SOPHIED project could appear to be simple: use enzymes produced by mushrooms to decolour and detoxify industrial effluents or to produce new less toxic colour compounds. Nevertheless, when one is aware that the Catholic University of Louvain’s Mycotheque (4th Mycotheque in the world and a member of BCCM) has no less than 26,000 strains, a question is immediately raised:

Which strains to choose?

Fortunately, this task is eased by the previous results in some of the SOPHIED project’s partners’ and by their expertise in developing and using screening methods. An expedition was organised to collect strains in the Comoro islands where it was possible to collect several samples.

BCCM= Belgian Coordinated connection of micro-organisms

There are currently 434 mushrooms recorded in SOPHIED’s database, which includes 216 species of mushroom. Amongst these, 16 microorganisms were selected for the treatment of effluents and 10 for the synthesis of dyes.