ABSTRACT
Crude oil exploration and storage have led to wide distribution of petroleum hydrocarbons (PHs) in the environment. It is of a common knowledge that crude oil wastes have disastrous consequences for society in three different angles such as economically, environmentally, and socially. According to ITOPF (International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Ltd) statistics, though the number of tanker spills is in down trend, oil trading is in up trend for the last 5 decades (1970–2018). This not only suggests that non-spill source is the major contribution for the present appearance of petroleum contaminants in the environment, but also alerts the future threat environmental burden posed by petroleum pollutants. Biological degradation of PHs by bacteria, fungi, and plants is one of the eco-friendly approaches which has been successfully implemented in notorious oil spills including 1989 Exxon Valdez incidence (260,000 billion barrels of crude oil spilled at Prince William Sound, Alaska, USA). There are several types of bioremediation approaches and are continuously being updated for the successful restoration of the contaminated target media (soil or water). Though majority methods have been addressed at in vitro level, the implications of these methods at in vivo level have not received much attention. This scenario creates sufficient gaps between lab-to-land level experimentations. Therefore, the present chapter has tried to consolidate the methods related to bioremediation at one point. These methods include isolation of molecular identification of PHs-degrading microorganisms, optimization studies in biodegradation, microbial degradation of PHs in the medium and soil (in vivo and in vitro), implications of ‘omics’ methods in bioremediation, and ecotoxicity studies.
