Bacterial community diversity of crude oil-polluted soil, water and sediment in K-dere community Ogoniland Nigeria using 16s amplicon sequencing

The exploration of crude oil in K-dere community over the years has resulted in environmental contamination, raising the need to study the abundance, diversity, and potential of the bacterial community in the affected environment because of its ability to cause a shift in the bacterial community composition of the contaminated system. This understanding is needed for the potential development of bacterial-based oil-remediation products. Crude oil-contaminated soil, water and sediment samples were collected from the K-dere community in Ogoniland, Nigeria, and the physicochemical parameters were determined using standard procedures. The bacterial community diversity was determined using the 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing on Illumina MiSeq. The results showed that the soil and sediment samples were highly acidic (soil = 3.40±0.15 and sediment = 2.10±0.08), while the water sample was slightly acidic (water = 6.00±0.9). The sediment sample had the highest electrical conductivity of 19750±5.72 µS/cm and nitrate concentration of 66.0±1.63 mg/kg, while the water sample had the highest total dissolved solids of 109.50±0.05 mg/L and total suspended solids of 2.00±0.00 mg/L. The soil sample had the highest total petroleum hydrocarbon and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon concentration of 10412.5±0.163 mg/kg and 63.583±0.02 mg/kg, respectively, while the water sample had the lowest. The top seven (7) phyla and fourteen (14) distinct bacterial genera were detected in all samples. Phylum Proteobacteria had the highest abundance in all the samples, and genera Pseudomonas, Acidibrevibacterium, Acidiphilium, Leptospirillum, Rhizomicrobium and others were detected in all the samples. The highest bacterial community diversity and abundance were revealed in the soil sample. The findings revealed that the bacterial communities in these sites could be harnessed or optimized in bioaugmentation and bioremediation of hydrocarbon-contaminated sites. This implies that these crude oil-contaminated sites contain bacterial communities that can serve as bioresources for the degradation of crude oil hydrocarbons.