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International Journal of Zoology and Applied Biosciences Review Article
Microbial consortia: A sustainable biotechnological approach to waste management and resource recovery
K.V. Shalini, Rohan Gavankar, Sapna B, Nanda Bhupal Jagtap, Virendra K Sangode, Priyadarshini N Deshmukh
Year : 2026 | Pages: 15-28
Received on: 26/06/2026
Revised on: 17/07/2026
Accepted on: 13/09/2026
Published on: 31/10/2026
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K.V. Shalini, Rohan Gavankar, Sapna B, Nanda Bhupal Jagtap, Virendra K Sangode, Priyadarshini N Deshmukh( 2026).
Microbial consortia: A sustainable biotechnological approach to waste management and resource recovery
. International Journal of Zoology and Applied Biosciences, 11( 5), 15-28.
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Abstract
The accelerating pace of industrialization, urbanization, and population growth has intensified the global waste crisis, exposing the structural limitations of conventional treatment technologies such as landfilling, incineration, and physicochemical treatment. These methods are frequently costly, energy-intensive, and prone to incomplete pollutant removal, often merely transferring contaminants between environmental compartments rather than eliminating them. Microbial consortia are cooperating assemblages of bacteria, fungi, archaea, and algae that have emerged as a biologically elegant and economically viable alternative capable of degrading complex, heterogeneous waste streams that defy treatment by single microbial strains. This review synthesizes current knowledge on the classification of microbial consortia into natural, synthetic, and engineered categories; the ecological and molecular mechanisms underpinning their function, including synergistic metabolism, cross-feeding, biofilm formation, and quorum sensing; and their demonstrated applications across solid waste management, plastic biodegradation, wastewater treatment, food waste valorization, and heavy metal remediation. Particular attention is given to the convergence of microbial consortia with advanced enabling technologies such as metagenomics, CRISPR-based genome editing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, biosensors, and bioelectrochemical systems which are transforming consortia from empirically assembled communities into rationally designed biological platforms. The review further examines the principal barriers to field-scale deployment, including consortium instability, inter-strain competition, scale-up difficulties, and regulatory uncertainty, before outlining future research priorities centred on smart bioreactors, AI-guided consortium design, and integration within circular bioeconomy frameworks. Collectively, the evidence indicates that microbial consortia represent one of the most promising avenues for achieving low-cost, low-emission, and resource-recovering waste management at a scale commensurate with the magnitude of the global waste challenge.
Keywords
Waste Management, Bioremediation, Quorum Sensing, Circular Bio economy, Metagenomics,.
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© The Author(s) 2026. This article is published by International Journal of Zoology and Applied Biosciences under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (creativecommons.org), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
