Role of Fungi in Bioremediation of Soil Contaminated with Heavy Metals

Abstract

Since the start of the industrial era till now, the soil has been severely polluted with huge amount of pollutants especially heavy metals. Heavy metal pollution is a major threat to human life and the environment, because of their toxicity, non-biodegradability, and accumulation in soil, food webs, and other parts of the ecosystem. Remediation of the soil contaminated by heavy metals is a serious environmental and technological issue. Due to several disadvantages of the conventional heavy metal removal technologies, bioremediation technologies are competitive, highly efficient, effective, and cheap; preserve the soil structure; and are environmental friendly. Fungi are the most potential and ideal organisms for removing heavy metals and degrading various pollutants, as they are recognized as heavy metal hyper-accumulators by numerous studies. They use biosorption, bioaccumulation, biotransformation, and biovolatilization as the main mechanisms to remediate the heavy metals and metalloids. Employing the integrated processes for heavy metal removal from the contaminated environment overcomes the obstacles that single techniques (physical, chemical, or biological) face. Integrated processes have several advantages such as efficiency, cost-effectiveness, short duration, versatility, environment friendliness, on-site adaptability, and large-scale implementation options. Fungal phytoremediation is a promising and effective technology. In this chapter the problem of heavy metal pollution, the importance of fungi as a metal potential biosorbent, interactions with metals, the potential of various fungi in the biosorption, their tolerance and detoxifying mechanisms, and the future prospects of soil mycoremediation are discussed.KeywordsHeavy metalsBioremediationMycoremediationBiosorptionFungal phytoremediation