ABSTRACT
Safe recycling of wastewater for mitigating the crop water requirement in freshwater scarcity areas is one of the greatest challenges for scientific community across the globe. Furthermore, generation of wastewater is boosting up gradually with the pace of time directly correlated with urbanization and industrial growth. In many developing countries including India, application of wastewater for irrigation in agricultural and horticultural crops is very common in practice to harvest water as well as nutrient potential at cheaper rate. Long-term application of wastewater for crop production accumulated significant amount of heavy metals in soil. These metals reach human body via food chain contamination and cause human health diseases. It is a prime need to remediate toxic metals from wastewater for water security as well as sustainable crop production without compromising environmental health. Microorganisms based bioremediation of highly contaminated wastewater can play a crucial role in managing water for reducing the metal toxicity and human health risk. In these methods, different kinds of microbes work for detoxification of pollutants and convert into a non-toxic form. Most of the bioremediation methods are cheaper, eco-friendly, require less skill and can be modified as per the need of the contamination at spatial and temporal scale.
