Tuesday, January 27, 2015 
1:10 PM, 2045 Bainer Hall 

Topic: "Endophytic Fungal Communities associated with Degradation of Polyurethane" 

Speaker: Dr. Vinay B. Raghavendra, Assistant Professor 
Teresian College, University of Mysore, Mysore, India 

Abstract 

Plastics have become an important part of modern life and are used in different sectors of applications like packaging, building materials, consumer products and much more. The use of plastic, especially polyurethane is growing day by day. Every year 25 million tons of synthetic plastics are being accumulated in the sea coasts and terrestrial environment. Polyurethane is durable and needs up to 1000 years for natural degradation in the environment. Polyurethane constitutes 64% of the total synthetic plastic as it is being used in huge quantity for the manufacture of bottles, carry bags, disposable articles, garbage containers, margarine tubs, milk jugs, and water pipes The use of polyurethane is increasing day by day and its degradation is becoming a great challenge. Annually about 500 billion to 1 trillion polyurethane carry bags are being consumed around the globe. Many plastics are both physically and chemically robust and cause waste management problems. Bioremediation is an important approach to waste reduction that relies on biological processes to break down a variety of pollutants. This is made possible by the vast metabolic diversity of the microbial world. In the present work, an attempt has been made to explore the diversity of endophytes on the biodegradation of polyurethane under the following objectives: (1) to highlight the activity of endophytes present in the medicinal plants; (2) to pool the source of polyurethane degrading enzymes; (3) to brief the mechanism of polythene degradation; (4) to highlight the methods used for the biodegradation of the polyurethane; and (5) to discuss the future aspects of polyurethane degradation 

Coffee and cookies will be served.