Notice of RetractionIsolation of a Chlorimuron-Ethyl Degradation Bacterium and Its Bioremediation in Contamination Soil

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

We hereby retract the content of this paper. Reasonable effort should be made to remove all past references to this paper.

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A chlorimuron-ethyl-degrading bacterium LCY-2 was isolated from the activated sludge samples taken from the wastewater plants of the factory producing sulfonylurea herbicides in China by enrichment culture. The strain LCY-2 was identified as Stenotrophomonas maltophilia sp. according to its physiological and biochemical characteristics, and 16S rDNA gene phylogenetic analysis. Strain LCY-2 could utilize chlorimuron-ethyl as the sole carbon and energy source and above 80% of the 100 mg·L^-1 initially added chlorimuron-ethyl was degraded after 5 days in mineral salt medium. Soil bioremediation simulation showed that the strain LCY 2 was able to degrade 84.7% of herbicide under the condition of inoculum size 2.0%, 28°C, chlorimuron-ethyl concentration for 10 mg·kg^-1 (dry) higher than that in noninoculated soil regardless if the soil was sterilized or nonsterilized after incubation for 30 days. In addition, under the optimal degradation conditions the degradation of chlorimuron-ethyl in soil can be described by the first-order kinetic equation, and its half-life was 10.727 d, thus indicating that the strain LCY-2 are likely able to accelerate the degradation. In conclusion, the results show the potential for the use of strain LCY-2 in the treatment of soil polluted with the chlorimuron-ethyl.