Chapter 14 - Microbial biosurfactants: An eco-friendly perspective for soil health management and environmental remediation

Abstract

The current agricultural practices are facing a major challenge of stagnant crop yield. The quest to increase the agricultural production for fulfilling the food demands of perpetually increasing population has led to the explicit usage of numerous agrochemicals. Although, the introduction of agrochemicals significantly upsurged the agricultural production but the explicit usage of these agrochemicals has significantly deteriorated the health of agroecosystems owing to their recalcitrant nature and longer persistence in the environment. Their entry into the food chain has also affected the health of higher forms of life. Adding more to the concern, the employment of chemical surfactants in developing the agrochemical formulations not only causes a noticeable upsurge in their toxicity but the chemical nature of surfactant also lays a negative impact on the sustainable management of the environment. The persistence of chemical surfactants in the agroecosystems is highly toxic toward the lower forms of life. Furthermore, the surfactants ultimately end up in the water resources where they not only contaminate the water but the foaming instigated by chemical surfactants leads to the creation of hypoxic environments which puts a negative effect on the aquatic life. Microbially synthesized surfactants called as biosurfactants are tension-active compounds which offer numerous advantages such as low toxicity, improved biodegradability and ecological acceptability and can prove to be potential alternate for chemically synthesized surfactants. They can potentially replace the chemical surfactants in the agrochemical formulations. Their inherent low CMC values can prove to be an auspicious tool for reducing the dose of agrochemicals as they can produce similar toxicity at lower levels. In addition to it, their potential and established role as agents of bioremediation can improve the health of soil systems. They enhance the solubility of toxic and residual pesticides therefore can make them available for biodegradation to other microbial systems. The present chapter highlights the toxicity instigated by chemical surfactants and proposes the employment of biosurfactants as potential alternate to chemical surfactants for eco-friendly management of agroecosystems and in bioremediation of agricultural environments.