Textile effluent is one of the most hazardous industrial pollutant sources. It is generated in huge volumes and contains a wide array of toxicants. Reactive azo dyes, which are xenobiotic compounds, are predominantly utilized by textile industries for dyeing cotton, viscose, wool, and silk. The conventional physicochemical treatments used by industrial effluent treatment plants are ineffective in dye degradation. The present study thus attempted to find a potential treatment for reactive azo dyes. A novel bacterial consortium VITPBC6 was constructed with the most potent and compatible reactive orange 16 (RO-16) decolorizing isolates of tannery and textile effluents, and the isolates were identified as Bacillus flexus VITSP6, Bacillus paraflexus VITSPB7, Bacillus megaterium VITSPB9, Bacillus firmus VITEPB1, B. flexus VITEPB2, and Bacillus aryabhattai VITEPB3. The physicochemical factors of RO-16 decolorization were optimized by response surface methodology. Consortium VITPBC6 was able to tolerate a high concentration of RO-16 up to 800 mg -L-1. A cocktail of enzymes including azoreductase, tyrosinase, laccase, lignin peroxidase, and manganese peroxidase was involved in RO-16 degradation by VITPBC6. Consortium VITPBC6 degraded RO-16 following zero-order reaction. The enzymes of consortium VITPBC6 had a Vmax of 352 mg -L-1 -day-1 for RO-16 degradation; however, the Km value was high. VITPBC6 biodegraded RO-16 resulting in the formation of small aromatic compounds. Lastly, different toxicity assays conducted with untreated RO-16 and its corresponding biodegraded metabolite revealed that the toxicity of biodegraded metabolites was significantly lower than the untreated dye.
