The goal of this project was to develop enzymes against one particular chemistry, namely the toxic metabolites of phenylurea herbicides like diuron. The reasons for this choice were that a scoping study conducted for the CCC CRC by Dr Ivan Kennedy, University of Sydney, identified diuron as the priority target for enzymatic bioremediation in the Australian cotton industry. We had already made good progress in isolating a gene/enzyme system that degrades diuron (and other phenylureas). However there are a set of aniline metabolites of phenylureas that are quite readily produced both biotically and abioticallyin the environment and which have problematic levels of vertebrate toxicity (albeit they are no longer herbicidal). In the case of diuron (and some other major products like linuron) the most troublesome of these is dichloroaniline. It might be problematic to commercialise an enzyme mix to degrade phenylureas that did not also degrade these aniline metaboltes.