ABSTRACT
Bioremediation is an eco-sustainable technology used to clean up contaminated soil and water by using biological agents. However, certain conventional techniques like high-temperature incineration, chemical methods, and various higher decomposition techniques are practiced for cleaning up contaminated sites. But, these processes do not lead to the final destruction of pollutants. Therefore, to overcome these problems, environmentalists are looking toward microbes such as bacterial/fungi/algae/yeast/cyanobacteria, etc., green plants, or their enzymes to remediate environmental pollutants from contaminated sites. Microbes have the ability to thrive in “adverse conditions” of high acidity/alkalinity/toxicity and temperature. Under favorable conditions, these degrade/transform toxic environmental pollutants into simpler and harmless ones. Some bacteria can also ingest the most toxic “cyanide” from contaminated soils/water. After the use of “super bugs” in the cleaning up of oil spills, there have been several successful stories of microbial techniques in the cleaning up of the contaminated sites. Plants involved in bioremediation processes are also adapted to thrive in very harsh environmental conditions and absorb, tolerate, transfer, assimilate, degrade, and stabilize toxic pollutants such as heavy metals, radionuclides, solvents, crude oil, pesticides, explosives, chlorinated compounds, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons from the contaminated sites (Chandra et al. 2015).
